Week of the Cat
by Seamagik
Summary: Continuation of Yawn from my alphabet series, From A to M and Beyond. If you forgot, the first chapter is the original one-shot. M/A
1. Original OneShot

Week of the Cat

A/N: A continuation of Yawn from my alphabet series. But before we get started with the new stuff; here's a refresher. Set six months or so after the end of the series, when Alec's continued on his 'path of redemption' (/me snorts), steps in to fill the shoes as Max's second, and is counted as one of her best friends. Further details about T.C. and relationships will be revealed as the story progresses. So, here's Yawn. New stuff starts next chapter.

* * *

Yawn- The original one-shot

* * *

"Knock it off," She hissed.

"I can't help it," He spoke around the yawn, rubbing at tired eyes. It was probably the third in a row, and it grated on her nerves. Or maybe it was the reason behind his yawns that was annoying her.

"Uhh, yeah, you can." She countered, "Just tell them no next time." Her look of incredulous disgust turned back into the typical glare that had never really fazed him to begin with, so he wasn't really sure why she bothered.

"Yeah right!" Alec exclaimed in dismay, hands falling back to his sides. "You try tellin' a dominant female that you don't want any, see how well it goes over."

Max rolled her eyes, leaning against the counter, arms folding across her chest, hands burrowing into the warmth of her favorite fluffy robe.

The movement drew his attention. And then his eyes moved over her speculatively. Max's eyes widened and she made to spring away but he was on her in an instant.

"Wha- Alec… Get off!" She attempted to shove him away but his hands were fisted in her robe as he snuggled against her.

"I need to smell like you," He frowned, burrowing tighter against her front and she gasped at the sudden ache that couldn't be arousal. If Alec noticed a change, he didn't mention it, 'cuz he was still frowning in annoyance as her pressed himself against her, hope creeping in to his voice. "Maybe they'll leave me alone if they think that I'm makin' it with their Commanding Officer."

But his words were punctuated by another yawn, and he was just too tired, so Max was finally able to shove him off despite his greater stature. Max glared, annoyed at him, pissed at Marcy and Janna, and, as usual, hating Manticore.

Manticore had mirrored the animal kingdom a little too closely on this one. Did the strongest male out-perform the strongest female? Yeah, maybe. Did many of the X-males have greater physical capabilities than the females? Possibly. Did the alpha males get the pick of girls? Definitely. But if it came down to two X's of equal dominance but opposite sex, it was the woman who'd reign supreme in the end. At the end of the day, it was the females who were in charge because it was the females who called the shots on the where and the when and the who was going to be getting play.

And Alec, being so dominant, had been happy about that animal kingdom mirror at first, 'cuz he found himself exceedingly popular. Then two of the most alpha females, voluptuous, tooth-ache sweet, red-headed Marcy and slow-smiling, wolf-eyed, leggy blonde Janna, had taken an interest in him, and now he was stuck in the middle of a full-fledged mate war, being sent from one bed to the other night after night as the two almost equal females vied for supremacy and the eventual right to Mate with him. Not that he was even ready to settle down, from what he'd said (whined) to Max earlier that week. If he wasn't such a pig, and a coward to boot, Max would have felt sorry for him and his droopy, unhappy eyes.

"I don't even like them," He'd insisted when he'd shown up on her doorstep, interrupting her in the middle of her frickin' bath, only ten minutes ago.

"Yeah, right," Max had scoffed, flipping wet hair over her shoulder. "You shouldn't have flirted with them, then." She'd left it unsaid that he sure as hell shouldn't have _slept_ with them. Jerk.

"Okay, fine," He'd grumped, rubbing at shadowed eyes. "Maybe I liked them at first… Before they started treating me like a piece of meat."

He'd sounded so insulted, Max hadn't been able to resist snorting, but she'd let him in her apartment anyway. It was weird how she always did that… always let him shove himself into her life. It was his frickin' problem, she should have left him out there in the hallway, let him clean up his own mess.

Whatever. It's not like taking care of him wasn't already her full-time job. Right after taking care of T.C., of course.

Anyway, now, here they were, lounging in her kitchen well after midnight, him, downing cups of coffee like a junkie getting his fix, and Max just glaring at him, thinking of her cooling bathwater, straightening her robe from his attempted scent-fest.

He paused in his coffee guzzling to glance over the blue robe, eyes sparking in interest. "Hey, are you naked under there?"

"Did you not catch the part where I said I was taking a bath?" She hissed. His next move came so far from left field, Max's brain went straight out the window and took all of her annoyance with it.

He put down the half-empty mug and took a sauntering step towards her. He reached out and Max fell still as he fingered the collar of the blue robe, a slow smile warming his face.

"Can I see?"

A slight throb between her legs. And then a scowl. He _would_ think that was funny, wouldn't he? What a frickin' guy.

"You've got to be kidding me." She rolled her eyes, turning away to shove the yellow kettle closer to the center of the burner. Stupid frickin' sexual frustration. Sometimes it sucked having a boyfriend you couldn't touch-

Max froze when Alec crowded against her back, long fingers trailing slowly down the soft edges of the collar, down and down, as his head craned over her shoulder.

Max popped one of his hands as they neared her breasts, her heart thudding wildly in her chest as she pressed into the stove and away from him. "What the hell, Alec! Are you trying to sneak a peek?"

He grunted, shrugging, and she felt the movement of muscle against her back, a wash of warm air across her neck. Then he grinned wolfishly, pulling away. "Just a little joke, Maxie. 'Sides, you know me. I'm a slave to the Y chromosome." He turned away, not even flinching as she whirled and her fist caught him in the bicep.

Payback for the punch came as he was stalking away, towards the bathroom. He threw over his shoulder, his voice light and his eyes dark, "Nice new perfume, you got there, Maxie. It suits you."

She froze, just for a moment, her face draining of color. Guess it was too much to ask that he wouldn't have been able to smell the signs of her body's sudden, traitorous awakening. Or at the very least, for him to pretend like he didn't notice. Shit.

By the time she'd rushed back to herself, bringing a blush of red with her, he'd shut the door behind him. Not that it mattered, she didn't have anything non-breakable near enough to fling at him anyway, so she had to make due with glaring across the room at the closed barrier instead. Especially when she heard his snort of laughter and, "Bubbles?"

Max's glare fell away and she heaved a sigh in annoyance. That's what she gets for havin' someone like Alec as one of her best friends.

And the water came to a boil after that, anyway, so it's not like she could follow him and kick his ass or anything. She removed the shrieking kettle from the burner just as he was stalking out of the bathroom, skin still shimmering, proof of the water he'd splashed against his face to clear some of the sleepy, and maybe something else, fog.

He leaned against the counter, watching her silently as she poured the steaming water into the coffee mugs, as she set it aside, as she pulled a spoon from the drawer to add more of that instant crap that he couldn't stand but that was better than nothin'.

His casual demand made all thought and movement screech to a halt.

"Mate with me."

"What?!" The spoon fell from nerveless fingers, clattering to the countertop.

"You heard me."

She turned to stare at him in wide-eyed shock.

He was still leaning against the counter, still watching her, eyes unreadable. "Just claim me for a week or whatever. Just enough time for me to recuperate. Then," He shrugged, "When the week is over… you can revoke your claim. Maybe I'll get lucky and Marcy and Janna will have moved on by then."

So that's what this is about. "Alec-"

"Max, I'm frickin' exhausted," He pleaded, proof of how serious he really was, and Max released the unexplainable anger to just stare, expressionless, at him. "I'm worthless as your second when I can barely even hold my eyes open."

"I'm not gonna-"

"I'm not asking for the benefits," He frowned. "I'm asking for some frickin' sleep and for your help, as a friend. The only way Janna and Marcy will give up is if someone more dominant than them stakes a claim. And I gotta tell you, there's not very many females who outrank them." He left it unsaid that she was one of the few that did, because they'd already been over all this at the beginning of the siege, well over six months ago.

Her gaze moved over his hunched shoulders, his hunted look, and even exhausted and unhappy, his presence fairly filled the room. As dominant as they come, a good S.I.C., and, surprisingly, one of her best friends… A girl could do worse.

Not that this was gonna be permanent or anything.

He was opening his mouth, with another wheedling reason on why she should do as he asked, when her hands fisted in his sweater and she yanked him to her, her teeth descending into his neck before she'd even really thought it through.

His eyes rolled back into his head and only her tightened grip kept him from crashing to his knees. She lowered him, slowly, the rest of the way to the ground, following him down, straddling him, the slight, metallic tang of blood on her tongue. Her teeth released his flesh gently, her tongue glancing lightly against the wound, and her lips moved wetly over the mark before she pulled away from him completely. When she released her hold on his front, he collapsed backwards, crashing to the floor. She blushed, sitting back against his hips.

"Alec-"

"Gimme a minute," His breathing was ragged and it only took Max another moment, a slight pause, and a slow roll of her hips to realize what exactly it was she was pressing against.

"Fuck, Max, don't _move_!" He grunted, his teeth gritting together.

Her face deepened some more as she stilled, scowling at him. "Honestly, I'm amazed you can even get it up, the way you've been jumping from bed to bed each night."

He glanced up at her through thick lashes, a slight, wicked smirk twisting the corner of full lips. "Me too," Then his eyes moved over her thighs in dark appreciation and Max had to glance down to ensure the robe was still covering all the necessary spots. It was… at least it was until his hands gripped her knees, slid slowly up the length of her thighs. Her head fell back, her eyes closing, as he pushed the robe away from her body.

"Jesus, Max." He sounded pained.

"Max!" They both fell still as someone pounded on the door. Crap. Max recognized that throaty voice. "Max, open up!"

She pulled away from him quickly, straightening her robe and rising to her feet, pretending like she hadn't heard his head crack against the linoleum floor as he made a noise akin to agony, and part of her wondered if it was because of the interruption or because of who that voice belonged too. She took a deep breath, checked her robe one more time, and crossed the distance to the front door and a situation she didn't really feel like dealin' with.

"This has got to stop," Janna hissed as soon as the door was open, shooting a heated glance at Marcy. "Max, will you just tell her that I'm more dominant."

"Yeah, right," The short, voluptuous red-head rolled her eyes. "He belongs to me."

Then they both turned to look at Max, frowning, and Max sighed, pressing a tired hand to her eyes. Being one of the most alpha females, and the leader of T.C. to boot, could be such a frickin' hassle sometimes.

"Why are you even arguing about this?" Max frowned, still squeezing the bridge of her nose. "Just find someone else-"

"We don't want anyone else." Janna interrupted.

"Which one of us gets him," Marcy demanded and Max's hand fell away as she looked up at them, eyes narrowed. Piece of meat, indeed.

"I'm not King Solomon," She hissed.

"Yeah, but you're the Alpha-" And then Janna's nose twitched slightly as she caught the sharp tang of Alec's scent, and something slight and warm underneath, before her eyes narrowed in interest. "Is Alec here?"

Marcy perked up, her emerald eyes lighting in joy.

"Don't even look like that," Janna frowned, brown eyes still narrowed, but now in annoyance. "You had him last night."

"Yeah and-"

"And I'm having him tonight," Max interrupted, pushing down the rage that hazed the edge of her vision. The two women fell still and turned to look at her in shock.

Alec glanced around the corner of the door, eyes lit in something akin to glee. "Hello, ladies." He waved slightly as their eyes focused in on his neck, and the red, raw imprint of teeth.

The two women stared dumbfounded at the spot he'd been in, long after he'd moved back into the apartment, headed towards her bedroom, whistling. Then both their heads whipped back to Max's once more bland expression, the warm, musky scent in the air taking on a whole new, unexpected, and unpleasant meaning.

Marcy scowled, turned on her heel, and stomped off.

Janna's eyes narrowed. "I'll see you in Command tomorrow," She hissed before she whirled and stormed away. And if that wasn't a challenge, Max didn't know what was.

Well…

Shit.

Max closed the door gently. "You better be worth it, Pretty Boy," She muttered to herself, moving towards the darkened bedroom that Alec had disappeared into.

"Alec," She crossed the darkness, moving towards the bed, pretending like her mind wasn't still on their encounter on the floor of the kitchen. "I hope you realize what your sleep is costin' me. One of your skank-ho's just freaking challenged me to a mate-"

And she trailed off in disappointment.

"Alec?" She moved on to the bed and crawled over him just to be sure. He didn't even stir, his breathing even, body relaxed in slumber.

Well…

Shit.

Again.

She collapsed to her butt at his side, staring balefully at the mark on his neck.

And with the desire clearing, wondering if she'd made a huge mistake.

Whatever. It was only for a week. And she'd explain the situation to Logan and he'd get over it. And she'd wipe the floor with Janna and she'd get over it. And she'd avoid Alec and Alec's all too willing body like the plague and he'd get over it too.

Max only hoped that _she'd_ be able to get over it.

Max's thoughts were punctuated by a yawn and rather than roll him out of bed, she collapsed at his side instead. It'd been a long week, dealing with T.C., and Alec, and White, and Logan, and the two alpha females that Max had been in no way jealous of. Seemed like a two-hour nap was in order.

In the misty haze of near sleep, it didn't occur to Max that it'd be wrong to nuzzle at the mark on his skin, the mark that didn't really mean anything. That it wasn't anything but natural that his arms would come up around her.

Just a week, she told herself with another yawn, nestling into his body.


	2. Monday

_Monday_

* * *

The air was tensing, preparing for morning with a subtle shift of texture and scent. It took Max a moment to decipher that difference, lost as she was in the much more noticeable, pleasant, texture and scent of Alec's warm skin, her nose buried into his neck, her body sprawled half atop his. She smiled softly against his collar as the warm dredges of sleep slowly fell away… and then blinked in confusion for half a moment before bouncing away from him in horror.

He muttered something sleepy and unintelligible before rolling to his side and burrowing into the warm blankets… which he was totally hogging. If Max hadn't been so horrified she might have rolled her eyes and ripped away the covers just to be spiteful. His dirty boots were streaking her nice sheet set with brown. God, she was so kicking his ass and forcing a new set of covers out of him. She considered starting the ass kicking right now…

Instead she crept out of bed, wincing at every squeak of the old box spring, grabbed some clothes (she was still naked under her robe after all), and booked it to the bathroom. The water within the shallow tub fixed in the corner had long since cooled, the bubbles turned to a filmy gray grunge, and Max resisted the urge to sigh. The stuff was hard to come by and not cheap.

Ah well, another little something she'd put on Alec's ever expanding tab.

Mostly she was just glad that the candles hadn't burned her only recently fixed up apartment down. She wondered if she could convince Pretty Boy to clean up the wax puddling on the counter, dripping slowly to the faded linoleum floor. Probably not.

Candles were blown out, cold water was released to the sucking pressure of the open drain, and Max took a quick, low-pressure shower before throwing on her clothes. It was days like today that she missed the apartment she'd shared with O.C., who cares if it was too far away or not.

She didn't realize until she was dressed in the dark turtleneck and blue jeans and her wet hair had been combed out… She'd forgotten to grab shoes and socks. Damn.

Alec hadn't moved from his spot on the far edge of the bed, closest to the window. The window that rained moonlight down upon her shoes. Max watched him for only a moment, frowning, mapping out her path in her mind, before beginning her stealthy creep towards her objective.

She skulked around the bed, made a grab for her boots. Turned around to find hooded green eyes watching her in the soft, pre-morning darkness.

"Just gonna-" Her explanation died as he blinked sleepy eyes at her, seemingly confused, before flopping to his back and falling right back asleep. Her feeling of entrapment fell into annoyance. God, how tired could he be to wake up in a strange bed, his best friend turned mate staring down at him and just go right back to sleep? She thought about rolling him out of bed (that's what he gets!), wondered how amusing it'd be to watch his eyes widen only moments before he crashed to the floor…

But there was a softness to his sleeping face. An open relaxation. No smirk. Nothing wicked. Nothing hard or haunted or hidden; nothing even remotely frustrating or tiring or that would make her want to tear her hair out. Something almost... innocent.

Max's hand stilled inches from his face, from the hair brushing his forehead. She remembered to grab socks from the dresser in her flight out of the bedroom, but only just barely.

Command was still silent this time of morning. A few of the other shark blessed (cursed?) were lounging around on the faded gray couches in the corner, throwing popcorn at one another, but Max didn't stop to speak this morning, headed quickly to her office in the back.

"Whoa," Peta, another dark haired night model, narrowly avoided her C.O.'s rush as she stepped out of the hallway leading back to the fire escape, the bathrooms, the large warehouse space used for training, and Max's untidy office. "Hey, Max," She grinned, her eyes sparkling in interest, as she blocked her commander's path. "What's your hurry?"

"Work to do," Max mumbled, pushing her way past the other woman.

"You feelin' okay?" Peta knew better than to grasp at a transgenic that wasn't all put together, but her rich voice stopped the other woman just as effectively, only inches within the hallway's threshold.

"Yeah, I'm fine…" The Max's eyes narrowed and she turned to peer closely at Peta's strong, Mediterranean features. "Why, does something seem different about me?"

"You know… Now that you mention it…" Peta trailed off, squinting. Then her mouth drop opened and her almond shaped eyes widened in horror. "Oh my god you finally claimed someone," Peta shook her head sadly. "Oh my god, Max, what will Logan say?"

Max's mouth went dry in shock, her voice becoming demanding. "What, how did you know?"

"Calm down," Peta rolled olive green eyes, "I was just kidding-" The woman's words died slowly as Max's question caught up with her. She blinked, wondering why the brain that usually moved a mile a minute was now stuttering to a halt. "Wait? What?" She demanded eyes widened in very real shock as her brain caught up. "You did? Who?!"

Max escaped into the hallway, but the annoying, _annoying_, horrible woman followed her into the back. Peta was shaking her head. "Jesus, Max, are you serious? What are you going to tell your Ordinary?" Then Peta paused, and reminded helpfully, like Max had forgotten or something. "And I'm still waiting to hear the who."

"Nobody," Max muttered.

Peta stopped in the middle of the hallway, her mouth hanging open. "Oh my god, it was Alec."

"What do you want from me, Peta?" Max whirled on the olive-skinned beauty. "It's only temporary until Marcy and Janna let up on him. He stays up late enough for T.C. as it is, a mate war can only make things worse for him right now. It's just a favor."

Peta leaned away from her, smirking slightly. "Riiiight,"

Max huffed, her arms folding underneath her breasts. "Is there anything else you needed?"

Peta paused, weighing the slim woman before her. Finally she shrugged. "Can I have O.C.'s phone number?"

Max started, and then relaxed, her arms falling back to her sides as she rolled her eyes. That was a question she could handle. "How many times I got to tell you-"

"Sara and I broke up." Peta broke in. "And Clara decided to try and make it work with her former breeding partner for the sake of little Nina. So it's not like I'm lookin' to expand my harem or anything."

Part of Max wondered how the woman had kept the names of her two, now ex, girlfriends straight in her head. One of the blessings of being a transgenic, probably.

"No, Peta."

"But I've mended my womanizing ways!" Peta protested. "I'm ready to settle down and commit and I think that fine dark-skinned beauty you call a best friend is just what I-"

Of course that's when Marly, the blonde that had loudly proclaimed her heterosexuality when Peta had first fixated on her, came out of the training room, flushed, sweaty, and smelling faintly of sex. She paused in the doorway, looked up at them, caught Peta's slow smirk, and blushed red before booking it out of there.

"You were saying?" Max replied blandly. The other woman's petulant voice followed her into her office.

"You're no fun!"

Max snorted as the door closed on the pouting woman. No wonder Peta and Alec got along so well. Two peas in the proverbial players pod. That and their wicked sense of humor. Alec kept insisting he was only friends with Peta because he was holding out for a threesome. Willowy, long-limbed Peta kept grinning that as soon as she could talk Max into it… Morons, the both of them.

Max paused by her door, sighing at the papers piled atop her desk.

She'd thought, when she'd taken the reins of leadership, things would be a little more hands on… And it had been for a while, 'til they (they being Max and Alec with a little bit of Logan chiming in, ignoring Alec's biting mimicry) decided it'd probably be a good thing to keep track of what they had, what they needed, who was in T.C., what job specialties were… and once that floodgate had opened up, the paperwork kept pourin' in and Max struggled to find some kind of organizational system for it all. Alec helped when he wasn't workin' with the X-6's or keeping peace with the more aggressive trannies, but she really got the brunt of it all, especially this week when Alec's lack of sleep had seriously affected his already woefully short (when it comes to paperwork) attention span.

And on top of this mountain of paper, she was still running T.C., dealing with police, _and_ had to take to time out of her busy schedule to be helpin' Logan with all his missions…

Maybe she should branch out. Get Luke or someone else good at organizing to help her with the paperwork… Or maybe send someone else on Eyes Only… No… their missions, with Logan on the other side of the barricade six days out of seven, was some of the few times she got to see her untouchable boyfriend. Toxins n' all… he was lucky she let him come in on Mondays for the command meetings as it was… As for her going out to see him… She just couldn't justify dropping everything and sneaking out of T.C., past a police barricade, for a date night. So… Eyes Only missions was kind of the extent of their romance, right now. Logan'd probably flip in a completely stoic sort of way if she sent somebody else to take care of his Eyes Only stuff…

Speaking of Logan…

What the hell was she going to tell him about Alec?

* * *

"Sooo, listen… There's this little thing," Max smiled entreatingly, in a completely trustworthy manner. "You know how Alec's been having a problem with Marcy and Janna…" Max's voice descended into annoyance as she began pacing back and forth before the desk. "Instead of letting him pick up after himself and face responsibility and just man up and tell them that he doesn't really want them, I find myself once more taking care of his sorry ass." She paused in her pacing as anger overtook both her voice and her face.

Bland eyes blinked at her. "And... your point is?"

"And I claimed him," Max was glad that her voice sounded so sure as she turned to face the desk.

"It doesn't mean anything," She added after a moment, almost as an afterthought

Bland eyes turned cow like. "Max, how could you do this to me?!"

Max groaned, slumping. "Come on, Peta, you're supposed to be helping me out."

"What?" Peta demanded, from her spot in Max's chair behind the desk. "You told me to act like Logan."

"Logan isn't that whiny." Max huffed, whirling on her heel, stalking towards the dilapidated couch shoved against the wall next to her door.

"Are we talking about the same Logan?" Peta's amused voice followed her.

Max scowled, turning and sinking into worn leather cushions. "Are you going to help me or not?"

Peta began swiveling back and forth in the desk chair, hands gripping the arm rests, radiating amusement. "Come on, Max, it's not that hard, just be up front with the guy."

"That was upfront," Max protested.

"You sounded guilty," Peta retaliated, stopping mid swivel to stare blandly at Max.

"No, I didn't," Max said guiltily.

Peta's face twisted and she glared at the other woman in suspicion, leaning forward over the desk, as her eyes hardened to stone. "Max did something happen between you and Alec last night?"

"You're still pretending to be Logan, right?" Max asked, after a momentary pause.

Peta's eyes gave away nothing, so Max took that as a yes, but still, she found herself standing from the couch, protesting loudly when the woman's disapproving silence became overwhelming, "Nothing happened!"

Peta shook her head, once more herself as she leaned back into the chair. "You are so screwed. Even if nothing did happen, after a reaction like that there's no way Logan would believe you."

Max sighed, perching on the edge of her desk, pressing a hand to her eyes. "Maybe I should just not tell him…"

"Yeah right," Peta scoffed, shoving thick bangs away from her eyes. "You know Janna is a grade A bitch right? She'll probably jump you at some point."

"She said as much," Max replied blandly.

"And Marcy," Peta smiled slowly. "She's super sweet, but she really does want him. She'll try and yank Alec out from under your nose when you're not looking. And with your claim still new, it's going to make you a little crazy,"

"But I don't even like Alec!" Max protested, then amended, "At least, not like that…"

"Doesn't matter," Peta retaliated. "The animal won't like other people sniffing round your turf. Even if word doesn't get back to Logan, he'll figure out something is off when you start acting bat-shit crazy every time someone flirts with Alec."

Max waved that away. She'd control that part. It was the other part about new claims she was worried about, the part where-

"So, did you guys do it, or what?"

"Peta!"

"What?" Peta demanded. "Carter was tellin' me some of the best sex he ever had was right after he claimed his girlfriend. All that animal uncertainty in the first few weeks makes everything weird and sexy and aggressive-"

Max grumbled. She'd heard of similar reactions before in the previous six months and that's the part she was worried about. "Is there any way around that part?"

"Get Alec to claim you back," Peta shrugged. "Make it a two-way bond. Otherwise it's gonna be unstable for a while. Which means jealous bitch Max and crazy horny Max are going to be making bids for motor function every so often."

"A full Mating is too hard to break," Max shook her head. "And we only need it to last a week, maybe less, remember?"

Peta's olive eyes danced in amusement. She shook long, wavy hair as she stood, and Max could have felt jealous for how ridiculously gorgeous the woman was if she didn't see a kaleidoscope of gorgeous people almost all day long. Plus, y'know, Peta being such a strong hitter for the other team and a mini-Alec to boot... "We got a few hours to kill before the meeting," Peta grunted, losing interest in Max's denial. "Let's go eat."

Max blinked at her. "Are you sure you and Alec aren't twins? Fraternal, maybe?"

Peta grinned wickedly. "Hope not, that would kind of kinkify our status as secret lovers, don't you think?"

Max's face twisted into an angry snarl. Then took the very small change necessary to turn the snarl into an angry scowl when she realized Peta was laughing silently at her.

"Alec so owes me for this," Max huffed, shoving open the door.

"I'd demand lots of orgasms," Peta suggested helpfully as they made their way out of the office.

"Why do I keep you around again?" Max's eyes flicked back to the other woman.

"Dunno. You're the one that put me in charge of night detail," The alpha female shrugged. "Meh-be you just have a thing for snarky people?"

Maybe.

Or maybe snarkiness was just one of the traits of being an Alpha. Something to do with superiority complexes or something? But Max wasn't snarky (denial), so maybe not. But then again, neither was Marcy. Really, that woman's sweetness almost seemed more threatening to Max than Janna's bitchiness.

It was probably a cover. Little red-headed green eyes was probably super evil or something underneath all those niceties. Max started, wondering at the derailment of her thoughts. How did she get so off topic? Right, snarkiness. So most of her staff was snarktastic, so what?

Peta, heading up night detail. Mole for the transhumans. Jericho, Jeri for short, as the representative for medics. Catch for battle processors. Switch for the empaths. Carter for the day guards. Just to name a few. And almost every one of the Alphas on her staff was a sarcastic bastard. Just like her second, the snarkiest of them all, Mr. Golden Boy himself-

* * *

Sunlight was glancing across his face, making his eyes squeeze tighter in annoyance. He only lasted for a few moments before he grudgingly admitted that yes, he was awake. He must have been dreaming, 'cuz for some reason, he couldn't escape the smell of Max…

His eyes snapped open and he glanced around the room in confusion.

No, this was not his bed. Nor was it Marcy's or Janna's. And that wasn't his dresser, or his curtains, or his robe. But that robe seemed familiar somehow…

Alec's face colored.

The previous night was comin' back in a rush, now, and rather than relaxing, Alec sat up with a shot and was worried that he was going to start hyperventilating. Shit! Fuck! Damn! What had he been thinking, asking that of her! What had she been thinkin', to actually agree to a claim?

He paused, looking down at his fully clothed body and her rumpled bed.

And why hadn't she rolled him out of bed when she saw what his dusty boots had done to her nice sheet set? Eh, he knew a place where he could score some more.

Speaking of Max… where the hell was she?

A quick inspection turned up that the apartment was as silent as the bedroom, and the little display on her microwave told him that Monday morning's command meeting was almost about to start. Crap. No time for a shower then, just time to splash his face with water and get the hell out of dodge before Max blew a gasket.

He told himself he wasn't rushing to command to see how Max was takin' the whole 'claim' thing… Even if her noticeable absence when he'd woken up, command meeting or no, worried him that she was probably falling on the side of 'not good.'

His eyes flicked over the hardened wax gracing her bathroom's sink top and down to where it'd puddled on the floor. He briefly considered cleaning it up... Then snorted. Pffft. Yeah right. Even Max's threats of serious bodily harm couldn't convince him to do that.

He looked up, caught his reflection in the mirror. And fell completely still. He leaned forward over the sink. Frowned at the mark of teeth at the curve of his neck, the hint of bruising. He hissed as he probed delicately at the mark. Hissed again as electricity crackled from his neck all the way down to his toes and his pupils dilated.

Well…

That was an interesting side effect. He vaguely wondered how he would react if Max-

Alec cleared his throat before splashing his face with some more water. He needed to stop wasting time and get a move on, before Logan found a way to make him look bad in this week's command meeting.

* * *

"Where's Alec?" Logan glanced around, wondering if the sleep-deprived man had finally caved to comatose slumber that would let him miss a meeting and undoubtedly earn him a reaming.

"He's sleeping," Max shrugged, looking up from her lean over the back of Jeri's chair, interrupting her pre-meeting discussion of the woeful lack of medical machinery. Strangely, Max didn't seem annoyed that Alec was late, and it made Logan frown in confusion.

"Should someone go wake him?" Mole asked blandly, and Max could tell he was just burning to make some kind of Sleeping Beauty reference.

Max smiled, righting herself. "Come on, Mole, I know you want to kiss him and all-"

"Hey!" The unofficial leader of the transhumans protested.

"I could go get him," Peta grinned from her spot by the window, making to push herself out of her lean. "Where's his apartment again?" Peta's smile turned evil. "He _is_ at his apartment, right, Max?"

"Just let him sleep," Max huffed. "He can catch up later." Her voice descended into an angry anti-Alec mutter that seemed more in keeping with her character. "It's his own fault anyway."

"Maybe he had a busy night," Peta was still grinning, sunlight kissing her dark hair as she relaxed once more into the window pane.

Max scowled. Logan shook his head, wondering why Max let him get away with jumping between those two women's beds night after night when his womanizing ways so obviously pissed her off and was so obviously beginning to affect his performance. Maybe he should say something to her later-

"So," Max began loudly, crossing to the head of the table. "Anyone got any news?"

"Yeah," Mole grunted, "We got some busted pipes over on Fifth Street, and –"

Max put on her C.O. face and sank into the chair at the end of the worn, oval, oak table, nodding, as the meeting kicked off.

Peta followed her out of the conference room when the whole thing was over, half an hour later (it'd been a slow weekend), glancing disdainfully at the manila folder in the other woman's hand before focusing on something she felt was more important. "So, Max, about the night guard…" Logan watched them leave, frowning slightly (Peta, for some reason, just rubbed him the wrong way), before deciding that he should use this opportunity to see how he could put his skills to use on the computer system.

"I told you I'd go through the files and find you some more people to fill in the gaps." Max rolled her eyes as they moved the few feet it took to get to her office door. "What more do you want?"

Peta shrugged. "Just thought I might help you go through the files." She closed the office door behind her and waited a moment in silence as she collected her thoughts. Finally, she glanced up at Max, frowning. "Plus, Max, I gotta tell you, the more I think about it, the more you really do gotta tell Logan."

"Thanks for the advice," Max crossed round the desk, sinking into the black leather of the rolley chair Alec had 'requisitioned' for her. She didn't sound particularly grateful for Peta's statement of the obvious, and it made the other woman frown.

"It's always best to be honest, Max." There was something soft in Peta's voice that made Max look up at her questioningly. Max opened her mouth, to ask her how she was doin' in her new-found single state (Marly notwithstanding) when someone knocked on the door.

Not someone.

_Him_.

Liquid electricity crackled through her fingers, and she glanced down in confusion to find that she was gripping the folder hard enough to turn her knuckles white.

Peta laughed, low. "Guess that's my cue to leave," She crossed to the office door, throwing over her shoulder, "Hey, check and see if we got any transhumans that might wanna do it, too. I'm all about interspecies love."

Alec poked his head around the door, clear, rested eyes gleaming. "Sounds fun. Can I play?"

Peta rolled her eyes, pulling the door the rest of the way open, standing before him. "How many times I gotta tell you? It's not going to happen, Alec." Peta pretended like she couldn't feel Max tensing from across the room. Her eyes glanced over at the mark on his throat, testament to the fact that Max's brain must not have been working very hard during the marking. She shoulda put it somewhere more discreet. Then again this was Max; she was probably crazy territorial even (especially) in the grips of instinct.

"Come on, Peta," Alec grinned down at her, tongue catching momentarily in his teeth. "Think of the beautiful babies we would make,"

"Gag me," The lesbian rolled her eyes, brushing past him before Max's nails could dig through that poor, abused folder.

"Eh," Alec shrugged at Max, wondering why she looked so annoyed. "She secretly wants me,"

"Only for your hot body!" Came Peta's amused voice from the hallway.

"You see?" Alec perched on the edge of the desk. "So, fearless leader, what's on the agenda for today?"

"You missed the command meeting," Max grunted, ripping open the file Logan had handed to her at the end. Then protested when Alec snatched it from her.

His eyes skimmed over it. "Yeah, yeah, corruption, blah, blabbity, blah." He snapped the folder shut, tossing it to the messy desktop. "You ever notice that all Logey-bear's missions start to sound the same after awhile?"

"I'm so sorry that the bad guy's of the world aren't varied enough for your taste," Max annoyance died and she watched, entranced, as he rolled his neck; her eyes zeroed in at that mark on his skin, the hint of bruising, the imprint of teeth that wouldn't fully fade until she revoked her claim. Her cheeks colored slightly as breath collected in her throat and would not leave.

His eyes reopened and he caught her in her stare. He grunted, his fingers probing at the delicate flesh of his abused neck. "Eh, it's not that bad. Doesn't even really hurt. It's actually kind of…" Then he blushed faintly under freckles and would say no more… 'Cuz, if anything, touching the bruised area remained fairly… arousing. But that was the weird animal bits of him that he, like most trannies, liked to pretend didn't exist. No way in hell he was going to admit anything like that to Max, or, hell, even to himself, if he could help it.

"Actually kind of what?" Max demanded. Gross? Weird? What?

"Nothing," He responded, beginning to dig through the stacks of paperwork on her desk. "What's all this crap?" He asked, effectively changing the subject.

"It's all mixed together," Max grunted, frowning in annoyance across the mess that hid a desktop she hadn't seen in ages. "Some of it is inventory, some of it is trannie profiles…"

"Ugh," Alec groaned, standing from the desk to sink into one of the chairs across from her as he went through the loose leaf, began separating the pages into more clearly defined piles. "Can't we just set up some kind of bin system in front of your door instead of letting people dump it all over your desk?"

Max shrugged, reaching for a stack of her own.

"Why are we even having them fill out these sheets," Alec grunted into the silence, five minutes later. "Why can't we just have Luke interview them all and plug their profiles into the system?"

"It'd take too long to interview them all face-to-face," Max replied, distracted. There's another night-op's. She set the profile aside to show to Peta, later. "This way we can plug it all into the system at one time. Besides, Logan is still working on making our database secure from outside hacks."

"Think of the trees, Max," Alec replied, not even looking up from his own sorting.

"Just keep working, Pretty Boy," Max grunted.

Alec lasted for about a half hour before boredom completely overwhelmed his system. Plus, it was damn hard to concentrate on all the papers and words anyway, what with the way he kept glancing furtively at Max; wondering what she was thinking, if she was regretting the mark on his throat, how he could get to see her naked agai- Wai- What?

He grunted, placing the stack he'd been working on onto the floor. She glanced up at him.

"Let's go get something to eat." He suggested.

"Already ate," Max grunted in response, looking back down at the profile in her hand.

"That was probably hours ago," Alec retaliated. "Let's go get some snackage."

"Go by yourself." She didn't look up from the paper, from the strange black squiggles that she knew must be words but she just couldn't focus on when Alec was so totally focused on her.

He stared at her for another moment, before shrugging. "Eh, fine. Whatever. I got the X-6's today at noon. I might as well eat n' go warm up." He grinned. "I might even actually be useful to them today." As compared to earlier in the week when he'd put them through forms and had only caught a few mistakes, as bleary eyed as he'd been.

Max grunted.

Alec watched her for another moment, before pushing himself out of the chair and headed to the door. He paused at the threshold, turning to look at her, hesitating only slightly.

"Hey Max?" His eyes glanced across the top of her bent head.

"What, Alec?"

His voice was neutral. "Thanks." Max froze, looking up at him. He looked away when she tried to catch his gaze, his face coloring in embarrassment. "For… well… you know. And for letting me sleep in n' stuff."

Everything was getting too real, and Max struggled to return the situation to familiar terms. "Alec?"

"Yeah?" His voice was still soft as he glanced back at her.

Max looked back down at her files. "Don't ever crash in my bed again, okay?"

Alec snorted, becoming someone she knew how to handle. "News flash, honey, your bed sucks. Not nearly soft enough."

Max could have waved it away, but he grinned wickedly and kept talking. "As compared to-"

"Go eat, Alec."

"But I was gonna give you a compliment, Maxie." He protested.

"I'd rather you didn't." Her voice became low in warning.

He let it go, shrugging, adding the previous night to the list of things 'we don't talk about, but really probably should' before moving into the hallway, letting the door slam behind him. The air became… dunno… thinner, somehow, now that he was gone, and Max was relieved to find it was easier to breathe.

When Max lifted a tired, protesting neck once more, the utilitarian clock above her doorway read 12:08. The desk was beginning to look desk like; she could actually see splotches of worn wood through the piles of papers. She grunted as she unhunched an unhappy back, pushing herself away from the desk, legs stretching out. She leaned back into the office chair, staring up at the peeling paint of the ceiling. A little break wouldn't hurt. A little activity might do her some good.

She shut her door behind her, moving down the hallway and into the large room that doubled as one of their training facilities. Once upon a time, this whole building must have been some kind of warehouse, with the main part of Command, with its catwalks and computers and tables bolted to the floor, some sort of main operations room, Max's office and the adjoining meeting room as some sort of managerial haven, and this large, echoing empty space as one of the storage units. Now, a few gray mats padded the open area closest to the door, their worn material made dingy by the harsh glare of the fluorescents overhead. The rest of the floor was bare concrete that had at one time been polished. The lacquer was mostly gone now, and a few cracks were beginning to show in the areas not covered by crates or mats, but the room suited their purposes nicely, even if the faded green paint on the walls was a bit obnoxious.

She picked out Alec immediately and was unnerved to find that he'd turned to watch her as she'd walked in. He nodded before turning back to the two sparring X-6's before him; a girl named Sue and some dark-haired youth Max didn't recognize. Max winced when the boy's fist made contact with the girl's shoulder, but trusted that Alec wouldn't let it get out of hand. It was weird how good, patient, kind, he was when it came to training the 6's... Whereas when Max made a mistake, she never heard the end of it... Max dismissed the following thought involving payback and female dogs.

He'd removed the brown sleeved, green ribbed sweater, the same he'd been wearing the day before, and she found herself watching the movement of muscle beneath the brown t-shirt as he stepped between the two kids to show Sue a better way to block the blow.

Somebody slammed into her shoulder as they walked past.

It figures it'd be Janna's lean back that was moving away from her when Max caught herself in her stumble and looked up.

The leggy blonde shot her a disdainful glance but kept on walking. Max's glaring eyes narrowed even further. She'd better be heading towards those X-5's working out by those crates and not-

Janna swept right up to Alec. Max forced herself into a lean against the wall to watch the spectacle. She'd done her part in the drama, and so long as Janna didn't go for the throat, she'd let Alec handle his spurned lover from here on out.

"You can't be serious," Janna demanded, those eyes, usually wolf-like, predatory, canny, now just annoyed and ready for blows as he turned to face her. Guess she was jumping right into the argument. Janna was always shockingly upfront about things like that.

"You know how it is," Alec smiled apologetically, almost winningly, at the tall woman, only an inch or so shorter than him.

Max rolled her eyes.

God, why did he always have to play the nice guy? Why couldn't he just tell Janna to take a hike?

And maybe call her a bitch, while he was at it. Max smiled, narrow-eyed, at the thought.

"She doesn't even like you." Janna sneered, haughtily. Max pushed herself out of her lean, her smile twisting to a scowl, and Alec's body tensed for only a moment before melting back into fluid readiness. Janna noted the reaction, gazing up at him through thick lashes as a small smile lifted the corner of a pouty mouth. She arched towards him, her athletic body suddenly exuding liquid, coy flirtation. "You can't honestly expect me to believe this whole claim thing-"

"Believe what you want, Janna." He interrupted, not much liking the way she was looking at him. Like she was a carnivore that hadn't eaten for days and he was the idiot lamb that had sauntered into her den. "Now, is that all? I'm kind of busy."

Alec's voice was not harsh. Alec was never harsh with women that weren't Max. But his cool blandness must have been just as painful because Janna reared away from him, falling out of her seductive stance.

"Alec-" Long fingers closed around his shoulder and he glanced at her hand, like it amused him or something. Her soft voice might have made him feel bad if he didn't know what she was like. A master manipulator; the complete night to Marcy's day.

"What the hell are you doing?" Max's harsh voice across the sudden silence of the training room more than made up for Alec's earlier blandness.

Janna's back tensed and the woman must have forced her body back into calm judging by the slow relaxation of muscle. Janna's head turned and she tossed Max a small smile, brown eyes narrowed and full of challenge, before turning back to Alec.

Transgenics watched, entranced. It was like watching the proverbial shit speeding towards the metaphorical fan. Janna's hand moved across his shoulder, her fingers glanced up over his collar, and she stroked the mark on his throat that was easily recognizable as someone else's Claim.

Huh, guess Marcy had finally won. Good thing she wasn't here to see-

Alec was frowning, reaching towards her hand when something small, dark, and angry slammed into Janna's side, sending her to the ground.

"Holy crap!" Someone exclaimed from the corner as Max's fist slammed into Janna's face.

Alec was headed towards the two women rolling, struggling, snarling, on the ground, when he caught sight of Logan pausing in the doorway, looking at Max in confusion. The man's mouth opened in angry affront and he headed towards the spectacle and Alec figured Max would appreciate romantic-type damage control more than breaking up what looked shockingly like the beginnings of a mate fight.

"Logan," Alec jogged up to the other man, grasping him by the shoulder, spinning him back around and using his strength to pull him along towards the exit. "I was lookin' at that file in Max's office and I got some questions for ya."

Logan tried to pull away from the younger man, but frowned when he realized Alec was actually using transgenic strength against him. The blonde man had to make do with shooting confused glances over his shoulder as he was pulled away. "What's going on?"

Alec glanced back, pretending surprise at the question. "That? Oh, that's nothing," He waved it away. "They're just sparring."

Logan winced when Max yanked the blonde's hair sharply, wrenching the woman's head to the side. "Doesn't look like sparring to me. Isn't that one of your girlfriends?" The older man's voice started out worried and ended up accusatory, but Alec wouldn't pause in his relentless pull away from the two women on the ground.

"Eh, you know how crazy chicks are." Alec shrugged, suppressing a wince at the sound of a fist meeting flesh and Max's grunt.

"Alec-"

Alec dragged him the rest of the way out of the room and down the corridor, ignoring Janna's shriek of pained rage, proof that Max could more than take care of herself. He'd been worried for a moment... "So, the thing about that file is-"

Max was icing her eye, trying to nip a bruise in the bud, when Logan swept into her office half an hour later.

"How was your sparring session?" He asked coolly.

Max glanced over him. Alec had already given her the rundown of his version of 'damage control' when he'd brought her the bag of frozen peas for her eye. Hah, if he'd wanted to be helpful, he should have broken up the fight before people started connecting the dots between the mark on Alec's neck and Max's territorial reaction. 'Course, they probably would have figured it out anyway from the way Max had jumped the taller woman, so maybe it was a good thing that Alec had gotten Logan out of there. She'd been so busy wailing on Janna, she hadn't even known her sometimes boyfriend had come into the room. Not to say that Janna had gotten in a few good licks too. She winced at a twinge in her ribs and hoped that nothing was fractured. Winced again when the wince only made Logan's face even more suspicious.

"It's nothing," She shrugged painfully, her eyes squeezing shut for only a moment. "Guess we just got carried away." She twisted slightly in her seat, resituating, gritting her teeth.

"Max-"

"So, about this mission." She dropped the bag of peas to her desk, reaching for the folder.

"Alec already pulled that one on me," Logan replied blandly.

Max's hand fell still. She leaned back into her chair with a tired sigh. "What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know. An explanation on why you were fighting," He fixed Max with a stare that would brook no argument, "fighting, _not_ sparring, with one of Alec's girlfriends might do it."

"Janna's a bitch," Max supplied and the word made her feel a little bit better, a little bit happy, a little bit superior. Her toothy, narrow eyed smile died at Logan's continuing frown. "Do I… need any other reason?"

"Yeah. Kind of."

"Listen, Logan-" Max sat up and then winced again. Dammit.

Logan sighed, releasing the argument in the face of Max's stubborn refusal to answer his questions and her obvious discomfort. "Let me check," He moved towards her.

"What?" She pushed away from him, the dark chair's wheels squeaking, when he came around the desk. "Are you crazy?"

"Relax," He rolled his eyes, opening a desk drawer to pull some of the latex gloves from its container within. She was so throwing that box away as soon as he left. He pulled on the surgical gloves surely, quickly, with ease of practice borne of their many months of on-again, off-again dating. Right now they were on-again, so she guessed she'd have to stay still as he crouched and prodded at the dark, ribbed material of her turtleneck, just underneath her breasts.

She winced, but she didn't arch away, howling, and that was a good sign. He frowned, lifting the shirt away from her stomach and she reared away, protesting loudly.

"Relax," He repeated at her overreaction to the risk of skin to skin contact. His fingers moved haltingly across her bruised skin, dry latex was so not made for smooth gliding, and he frowned when she made to squirm away in pain.

"Hold still,"

"Hey, Max-" Alec paused in the doorway, glancing between Max's wide eyes and Logan's stormy eyes and the hand that was holding her shirt up against her breasts, the other splayed against purple flesh. Alec's eyes narrowed for only a moment.

Then he grunted, face twisting in playful disgust, of which only one was real. "Come on, guys, it's the middle of the day. Save the kinky sex acts for night time, will ya?"

"He was checking my ribs," Max scowled, pushing away from her boyfriend, shoving her shirt back down over her stomach. Alec was wearing his sweater again, but it could not hide the imprint of teeth at the side of his neck. Logan followed her gaze and his eyes narrowed in disgust at the mark upon the younger man's skin.

Tacky.

"Oh," Alec paused, frowning. His expression became condescending at Logan's disapproving look. "Well, as your _second_," The way he said the word, like it was a replacement for something else, made Max tense, but he kept on talking, "I coulda done that." He leaned into the doorframe, shrugging, his eyes unnecessarily hard. "And, hey, less likely to kill me."

"What do you want, Alec?" Logan stood back up, leaned against Max's chair, pretending not to notice the way Max leaned away from him.

"Actually, I came to talk to Max." The other man replied, the lazy stance of his unmoving body, like a stone monolith that wasn't goin' nowhere, made warning bells go off in Max's head.

Testosterone poisoning must be catching, because Logan frowned and stood a little taller. "Well, anything that you can say to Max, you can-"

"Maybe you should go, Logan." Max spoke up. Because there was definitely some things that Alec could say to Max that he could not say to Logan. Claim-type things.

"Max-"

"Just give us a few minutes, okay?" She gentled the words with a slight smile, and Logan relaxed, smiling down at her, his eyes softening. The moment was interrupted, naturally, by the resident pain in her ass.

"Oh, Max, we need so much more than just a few minutes," Alec leered at her. Max huffed, and Logan stiffened, his head whipping back towards the door. Finally, the older man just rolled his eyes, used as he was to the annoying transgenic. Once Max had come clean about the lie after T.C.'s flag raising ceremony six months ago, Alec made it a point to throw around sexually charged innuendos, as if trying to prove how ridiculous Logan's assumptions had been. Really, all he succeeded in doing was make Logan annoyed and a little bit paranoid that the taller man harbored some kind of school-boy's crush on his sometimes (when she wasn't freaking out and trying to break it off) girlfriend.

After Logan had _not_ stormed out, because storming is hard to do when you have to squeeze past someone lounging in a doorway, refusing to move, Max turned to take in her Second's bland expression. "What?" She demanded.

He was still in his lean, watching her blandly. "You realize I almost vomited all over your floor, right?"

"Can it," She grunted, reaching for her peas to slap the bag back against her face. "What do you want?"

He shrugged, more of a roll of his shoulder than anything else, as he glanced away, resisting the urge to smile at the sight. "Just came to check on you." His voice, when it came again, bordered on petulant and his eyes flicked towards her, stealthily checking her reaction. "Didn't realize you already had a nurse n' all."

Max snorted, and it was supposed to be a joke, but… well... "I think the claim is affecting your head."

Jokes don't always work so well with sensitive subjects.

"What?" His mouth dropped open. He moved into the room quickly, shutting the door behind him. Was she crazy, sayin' something like that when anyone could-

"You sound jealous, Alec," Max smirked, lowering her impromptu ice pack once more, tossing it to her desk, leaning gingerly back into her chair with something that seemed vaguely like smugness.

He laughed incredulously, thoughts silencing. "So says the woman that just tackled one of my exes."

"I was doin' you a favor," Max responded haughtily, happy in her unreasonableness. "See if I ever help you out again."

Alec rolled his eyes, crossing around her desk to lean against its edge, peering down at her. She fell motionless as his warm fingers stretched out, glanced across the cold, damp skin around her eye, now closed, her head falling to the side as she craned into his tou-

"I think you got ice on it soon enough," Alec's hand dropped away and Max came back to herself in a rush. "I don't think it's going to bruise." Then Alec shook his head. "I don't think Janna was that lucky, she already had the beginnings of a shiner when she slunk out of here."

Alec didn't miss the way Max's whole body melted in superior satisfaction. He knew most of it didn't have anything to do with the claim; Max hadn't like Janna from the beginning. He chuckled.

"How'd you beat her?" Alec asked. "Fighting dirty?"

Janna had her held in a lock, her arms wrenched painfully behind her back, when Max's head had reared back and caught the woman right in the face, dazing her, giving Max the chance she needed to break the hold and resume her beat down upon the blonde.

Max smirked.

"Something like that."

"Poor girl," Alec shook his head sympathetically, correctly chalking up Max's sharp look as a product of her dislike of the woman and the uncertain territorial tension that her teeth had caused. He almost longed for the end of the week. He was happy with their relationship as it was; best friends with a hint of a charge underneath that kept things just edgy enough to be interesting… To add something like this to everything… it could screw up the very careful balance he had cultivated over the last year… He suppressed all the following thoughts quickly, because, really, burying emotions was such a healthy way to deal with things.

Alec sank to a crouch before her and Max's mind struggled to keep up. "Alright, fearless leader, lemme see." He reached for her, and Max found herself rearing away from a man's touch yet again.

"What?" She smacked his hand as it neared her body. Leaned into her chair, away from his reach. "Why?"

"Like I'm gonna trust an Ordinary to recognize the signs of a fracture." He snorted.

Max scowled and he amended, not very sorry. "Okay fine, that _particular_ Ordinary. No offense to Logan, but the guy isn't a doctor. And unless Robolegs rolled around in some toxic goo lately, I'm not thinkin' he has X-ray vision."

"Neither do you," She hissed, and they descended into the stereotypical hissy hand-slap fight as he fought to get close to her ribs. He finally just leaned into his heels and shot her an annoyed look.

"It's me or a medic, Max," He said blandly, knowing full well how she felt about the sterile white environs of the medic's station. She liked it about as much as any other transgenic; not at all.

Max heaved a sigh of annoyance, let her hands fall away from their defense, let him probe at the dark material of her shirt. She winced, again. The left side was mostly okay. Left-handed Janna had gotten in her most powerful hits on the right side of Max's body, and Alec resisted the urge to get pissy. He didn't even really know why he'd gotten mixed up with that leggy blonde.

Oh right…

The legs.

Legs like that could make up for all sorts of personality shortcomings.

Max's teeth clenched and she hissed in pain and Alec's thoughts derailed and he glanced up at her in something that she thought looked a lot like worry.

Then he swallowed, looked again at the dark material of her shirt, knowing full well that things were about to get surreal.

Max held her breath as he hesitantly reached for the edge of her shirt. As he lifted it away from her stomach. Just friends, just friends, just friends, rush of air through nostrils as his fingers danced gently across her front, just friends, just friends, just friends… Hey.

Ow.

"Jesus," Max arched as his fingers pressed into the bruised, purple flesh at her side before sliding firmly around to her unbruised back, along the length of a rib.

"How else am I supposed to check for fractures?" Alec scowled. "Don't tell me Logan was all dainty with you." 'Cuz that only solidified in Alec's mind that the Ordinary didn't know what the hell he was doing. Alec only hoped that he'd been mistaken in what he'd seen when he walked in; that the man hadn't been stupid enough to press his fingers into Max's front, 'cuz that could worsen any injury she might have.

Max grit her teeth and bore it as long fingers moved to the next rib, probed painfully into her side for just a moment before sliding across the length of bone on her back, pausing every so often to demand if she could feel it in her front. The answer being a resounding _yes_, goddammit. She released her breath in a painful gasp after each lift of his hand, before sucking in another held breath before his hand descended and he started the next torturous check.

Mostly just bad bruising, but one possible fracture. Only time, or Dr. Shankar and a real X-ray, would be able to tell… Alec hoped it was just bad bruising of the bone; that it'd heal quickly over the next couple of day… But either way… Alec could frickin' _kill_ Janna.

It took him a pain filled eternity to reach the last bone and Max sighed in relief. Then he reached for the other side.

"Hey!" She protested.

"Just 'cuz you're not as bruised on this side doesn't mean you don't have any damage," He retaliated and restarted his painful ministrations.

The left side didn't hurt _as_ bad. Just regular type soreness from being used as a punching bag.

Which means that she was better able to concentrate on the firm press of his fingers through the occasional twinges. Warm fingers. Long fingers.

Fingers that had slid up her thighs and pushed her robe away from her body-

Max bit the inside of her cheek, suppressing a gasp, her head falling backwards to rest against the leather of her chair. Did it just get hot in here? The turtleneck covering the top half of her torso suddenly seemed to cover too much; felt heavy and smothering.

Alec frowned, catching something in the air. Something warm. Something-

His eyes narrowed.

The slide of his fingers, though still firm, became decidedly slower. When she glanced down, before fixating once more on the ceiling above, his face, though still focused, seemed much more enrapt. And she didn't miss the way the thumb of his right hand, the hand pressing her shirt a little bit harder between her breasts, swept back and forth across the suddenly sensitive skin just below her bra.

Max chuckled thickly, tried to break the tension. "This isn't awkward at all, huh? Feeling up your C.O.?"

He grunted, his hand finally stilling, flattening, flexing against her back. The tension went nowhere but up.

She glanced down once more, fell still, because he was staring up at her, no longer focused upon her ribs. His green, green eyes were dark, not at all amused or teasing, which is maybe why she didn't push him away when the flat of his hand slid around to her side, grasped her ribcage, pulled her slowly forward in her chair 'til she was just barely upon her seat. If he'd leaned forward in his crouch, his torso would have pressed between her splayed legs. He didn't lean forward, just kept watching her with that somber gaze. Waiting. For what, she didn't know.

"Alec," She breathed, wishing that she hadn't, 'cuz something changed in his eyes and she knew that's what he'd been waiting for. He fell forward to his knees, just fitting between hers. She didn't push him away when he slid her shirt higher up, when he broke their heavy gaze to look down.

Her head was thrown back, her hands sliding through silky hair, when the door opened.

"Hey guys- Woah!" Peta fell back, her eyes widening. She glanced between the two of them. "Is it hot in here, or is it just you two?"

Alec came back to himself with a crash. And his eyes widened.

Oh my god, his tongue was between her breasts. His eyes slid slowly up in horror to connect with Max's equally shocked gaze.

He pulled away from her quickly, ignoring his body's protest as he released his hold on her shirt, let her push it back down over stomach. Max took a shuddering breath, blushed red, and scowled for all she was worth.

"He was just-"

"Checkin' for fractures," Alec finished, unable to stand just yet.

"With your tongue?" Peta demanded.

Alec ignored her, focusing on a spot somewhere to the left and above Max's shoulder. "Your right side… it's hard to say. You should stop by and see Jeri for a wrap, just to be on the safe side." He nodded perfunctorily at her as he stood, body back under control, and got the hell out of there as fast as he could.

Peta watched him go, amused. She turned back to face Max, green eyes narrowed in interest as she shut the door behind his so-not-fleeing ass. "So, you know Alec and I have this little agreement concerning you, right-"

"Not now, Peta," Max buried her face into her hands, embarrassed beyond all possible belief.

"I told you the claim was going to make everything messy and weird and sexy," Peta shook her head, refusing to be sympathetic.

"Can you save the I told-you-so's for next week when it's all over?" Max groaned into her hands.

Peta grinned. "Oh, there'll be plenty of those, don't you worry about that." She paused, let her eyes glance across the top of Max's head. "So, did you tell Logan?"

"I haven't gotten a chance yet," Max refused to look up. Refused to watch Peta watching her like she knew something that Max didn't want to know.

Peta shrugged. "The longer you wait, the more awkward it's going to be when Logan does find out."

Max glanced up. "He's only in T.C. on Mondays. All I gotta do is survive today."

"Don't you and Alec have some kind of mission with him tomorrow?" Peta pointed out.

"Alec will keep his mouth shut." Or she'd kill him. "So, as long as Logan doesn't figure it out today, it'll all be good."

Olive eyes watched her for another long moment. "Yeah… okay…" Peta coughed into her hand. "Here's hopin' you guys don't get stuck in a closet."

"Peta-"

"Seriously, Max, it's only day one. How are you going to survive a week without jumping Alec?"

Max scowled, but Peta kept on talking, seemingly oblivious... almost gleeful.

"I mean, you two were like a minute away from him bending you over your desk and-"

Max's blush made its reappearance. "Okay, Peta, I get the idea!" She glanced away, muttering. "You didn't have to make the motions..."

Peta shrugged, not very sorry, "I'm just saying."

"Well don't," Max's scowl made a reappearance. "Alec's like my best friend; he and I aren't like that."

Peta shook her head, making long wavy hair sway. "Oh, you are so screwed."

"I'm serious!" Max insisted. Then grabbed a few sheets of paper and held them out to the other woman. "Here," She grunted.

Peta took them, and leafed through 'em. "More sharkys, eh? Great." She paused at one profile, frowning.

"What is it?"

The night model grunted, her face twisting, and back again. "Nothing. It's just Clara's breeding partner." She scanned the profile, reading all the info quickly.

"Peta," Max began warningly.

"What?" Peta frowned, not even looking up. "I'm so over her, it's not even funny."

"Uh-huh…" Max was so obviously not buying it.

"Let's talk about you and your sexual frustration... and how Alec and I would love to fix that for you." Peta leaned forward over her desk, smiling predatorily. Max just arched her eyebrow at the other woman's weak attempt at flirtation/distraction.

* * *

"Hey, Princess."

Alec turned obligingly, waiting as Mole sauntered up.

"Did you have sweet dreams in your castle?"

Alec smirked, knowing the reptilian transhuman had probably been aching to make a Sleeping Beauty reference all day.

"I kept waiting for you, Charming," Alec batted green eyes at his friend, before resuming his walk across Command, headed for the exit.

Mole snorted in disgust. He fell in next to the squirrelly human that totally wasn't his friend. His eyes moved across the mark on his throat. "Jeez, you never heard of a turtleneck?"

"I was in a hurry," Alec grunted in response, not willing to admit he'd opened his eyes, had freaked out because he wasn't in his own bed, remembered what had happened, freaked out even more, and booked it to Command to see how Max was taking it.

"So, judging by that shiner on Janna, I'm guessin' it was Marcy."

Alec grunted again.

Mole stopped. Alec sighed and waited, knowing what was coming. Mole began, blandly, "Course, there's some funny rumors around Command that about an hour ago, Max was the one that got pulled off of Janna-"

"Did you need something?" Alec interrupted.

"Christ above!" Mole looked flabbergasted for the first time in the months that Alec had known him. He would have snickered if the transhuman hadn't tacked onto the end, "It _was_ Max, wasn't it?"

Way too many people appeared disinterested in their conversation all of a sudden. Alec grabbed Mole by the sleeve of his overworn army jacket and pulled him out of Command.

"C'mon man, I don't want something like this getting around." He glanced around, but the street was mostly clear. He leaned into the wall next to the door, ignoring Mole's dumbfounded expression. "It's only for a week anyway."

"But… but _her_?"

Alec scowled. "Come on, Mole, Max isn't a bad kid."

"But…"

Alec smirked. "Don't be jealous, you know I'll always have eyes for you."

Mole snorted in response. "You have eyes for anything that moves, which is why this whole claim thing is kind of confusing me."

"Marcy and Janna," Alec reminded.

"Oh right," Mole remembered. Then he glanced sharply at Alec. "And you thought, oh a good way to get them off my back is to get Our Most Repressed One to put her teeth in your throat?"

"Working so far," He shrugged.

True. Mole shrugged. Janna was out for the count. Even if Max did eventually revoke her claim, there's no way the tall blonde would go after Alec again; her pride wouldn't let her. Marcy, though-

"Red is devious," Mole warned.

"Marcy is sweet," Alec retaliated.

"Like something that will make you throw up," Mole agreed before pointing out, "So you have to watch out for her. She's more of a threat to you than a raging bitch like Janna; you really will feel bad for her; she won't be pretending when she bursts into tears. And she won't give up nearly as easily."

Alec shifted uncomfortably. He didn't like crying women. One of his many weaknesses (most of which did, in fact, involve women). Damn. "Eh, I'll avoid her."

Mole snorted. "Good luck." He paused glancing over the X-5 leaning into the wall. "So, where are we heading?"

"Back to my place to take a shower," Alec grunted. "Sorry, you're not invited."

"You wound me."

"Maybe next time, big guy." Alec smirked, skipping down the steps, offering the transhuman a jaunty half-wave as he moved down the sidewalk.

Mole went back into Command, still frowning.

"So?" Luke sidled up to him. "Was it Max or what?"

Mole opened his mouth to respond in a totally manly, non-gossipy sort of way, when Her Majesty stomped out of the hallway, Peta's smirking face at her back.

"It was just a suggestion!" Peta called after her.

"Scratch my itch, my ass." Max was muttering to herself. "I'll scratch her an itch, right upside her thick head." Max paused, glanced around Command. Before resuming her angry walk, voice raising. "I'll be at Mess if anyone needs me."

"Can I come?" Peta called after her.

Another huff as Fearless Leader stomped out of the front doors.

Mole forgot about Luke in the face of something more entertaining. "Jeez, Pita ("Peta," she corrected, scowling), when are you going to learn Max just don't swing in your particular, bent direction?"

Peta smiled slowly. "Oh, I wasn't talking about me."

Mole glared at her suspiciously. Wondering if she was also privy to the secret of The Claim. There was room for only one information monger in this here Command and it sure wasn't no newbie like her.

"What do you know about it, Feta?"

Peta scowled. "Peta, PAY-TA." She leaned back, smiling slowly. "But if you're having problems remembering it, that's okay. Not everyone can be as quick as me."

"If by quick, you mean easy-"

Peta resumed her scowl. "Is there something you wanted, lizard?"

"Not from you, sharky."

Peta sniffed, flouncing out of command.

"Why do you hate each other so much?" Luke asked.

Mole forgot about The Claim and his plans to further the rumors about Alec and Max so he could watch the Ordinary squirm. He shrugged, still on the subject of Peta. "She's annoying."

Dix leaned in from the other side. "He hates everyone at first, you know that."

"Hey!" Mole protested

"Give it a few months, she'll be on the list of people he secretly wants to date in no time," Dark haired Carter, day shift guard commander, chimed in.

"Hey!" Mole repeated his protest. "I'll have you know there's some people I can't stand no matter how long I know 'em!"

"Like who?" Carter's deep blue eyes were dubious.

"Anybody seen Max?" Logan came back from his trip to the bathroom, and undoubtedly, to check in on Max.

Mole looked pointedly at Carter. The X-4 conceded with a shrug. "I stand corrected,"

* * *

Max still wasn't hungry so her angry stalk towards the mess hall detoured. She coulda gone to the nearest med station for a wrap for her aching ribs, but screw that! She ended up on Walnut, instead, headed towards a red brick building at the end of the street and something and someone that she subconsciously and implicitly trusted to take care of her.

And frowned when she recognized the thick, curly, red orange hair bouncing up the street before her. She cleared her throat and the shorter woman paused, turning around. Their eyes connected.

Her arms folded across her chest. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"

Marcy's lower lip quibbled at the harsh tone and Max's arms fell away and she felt like a right bitch when Marcy rushed past her, back down the street, away from the building that held Alec's apartment.

God, she hated Marcy. 'Cuz it was so impossible to hate Marcy.

Max didn't do knocking. Max did barging. One of the many things she was good at. She peered around the living room, frowning. Really, it was remarkable how similar his one bedroom apartment was to hers. Little bit messier, but eh, keeping long hours will do that and unlike her, he didn't have to find things to do at one a clock in the morning when sleep refused to come…

"Max?" Came his voice from the bathroom. Max threw herself into the old couch in the middle of the poorly lit apartment, frowning.

"Hurry it up in there, I need you to wrap my ribs." She called, grabbing for his remote, pushing his brown… t-shirt… Her head whipped towards his bathroom.

"Go away!" He shouted.

"Why?!" She demanded in shock.

"Because everything's all weird between us and all I've got is this damn towel!" He shouted back. Then he paused, and his voice was sheepish from behind the door. "Oh, wait, my pants are in here, we're okay."

"I'm not going to jump you, stupid!" Max retaliated, glaring at the bathroom door.

"I'm not worried about _you_ jumping _me_," He muttered, from his place of safety in his steamed up bathroom. He glared at the misty mirror, wiped the fog away, glared at his reflection, because it was so much more satisfying.

"What was that?" Came Max's voice, followed by the sound of his TV being turned on.

Alec rolled his eyes, reached for his pants. "I'll be out in a minute." He spoke a bit louder, drawing the dark material of his cargo pants over his legs.

Max had seen him shirtless a million times, this would be no problem. He took a deep breath, stepped out of the bathroom.

It was no problem, Max told herself. She had seen him shirtless a million times. Her eyes flicked, almost disdainfully, across his chest, before she turned back to the TV. He wiggled damp toes in the tan carpet, leaning over the back of the couch, just behind where she was sitting, getting sucked into the programming.

"You're dripping on me," She grumped, when another droplet of water hit her, this time on the forehead, making a rush for her eye. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, her head arching back into the cushions so she could glare up at him.

He shook wet hair, spiking every which way, and grinned when she protested, flinching away from the falling water.

"Only you would find amusement in acting like a dog," She said blandly, looking up at him once more, relaxing again into the couch's back. He grinned down at her, wolfishly, really only proving her point, in her mind.

He finally pulled himself away from their little bit too intense stare, standing up. "I think I got some stuff in my bedroom, hold on."

He came back, only moments later, with the roll of bandages. "One mummy, coming up," He said cheerfully, sinking sideways into the couch next to her. She obligingly turned and lifted the shirt away from her stomach, knowing he'd need both hands, and this wasn't weird at all. Felt like old times, really. Maybe 'cuz she didn't have all that adrenaline pumping from kicking somebody's ass.

Her skin was still painted in vivid colors of purple and blue with a hint of black. Finally, he just looked up at her, stilling before he could even wrap his arm around her to begin the process. "Are you sure? It's gonna hurt." He warned.

Max scowled down at her skin, peering over the damnable breasts that were in the way before looking up at him. "Just do it."

He shrugged, pressing the back of her shirt up, securing the bandage at her spine and beginning the winding wrap that might ease some of her pain. She hissed as the material was tightened, but it was her only concession to discomfort.

Plus, she was kinda happy.

Her shirt was held up, he didn't have a shirt, he was still damp and all kinds of edible (Max glanced away. Or, so some people might think…) and they were not attempting to slobber on each other. Take that, freaky jungle cat living inside of her body. She could totally do this. She smiled when he finished, securing the end of the white bandages with a small metal clip.

He patted her uninjured side. "All done," and he shoved himself back into the cushions, fixating almost immediately on the TV.

"You are such a little kid," She shook her head, righting her shirt, adjusting her hair.

Alec shrugged, feet lifting to rest upon the coffee table, toes wiggling in the air, and if he wasn't so toned, his sudden melting relaxation would scream 'lazy schlub.' He didn't even look at her. "Hey, while you're up, will you get me a soda?"

Max stared blandly at him from her seated position at his side.

"Please?" He added distractedly.

Max sighed, coming to her feet, crossing to his kitchen. She grabbed a drink for herself, the price for her efforts, as well. She tossed him his before sinking once more to his side, leaning in to him like she'd done dozens of times before. He scowled, placing the soda on the coffee table, wondering why she had to throw it, before leaning back into the couch, his arm falling across her shoulder.

See? Normal. Just like old times.

She didn't know how long they just sat there, watching those mind-numbing cartoons. Just knew that the shadows were lengthening across the furniture, his skin was drying under her cheek, and he'd finally leaned into the corner of the couch, legs splaying, as she pretended like she didn't like to take unnecessary cat naps curled into his side, a ritual that'd begun after O.C. had moved back to the city proper, Logan had almost succumbed to their third accidental touching, and Max realized it was sometimes unbearably lonely at the top.

Her pager went off only minutes after she'd dropped off and she startled awake, glancing down at her hip in confusion.

It was Logan.

Which was also like old times.

"Something tells me you two are about to be off-again," Alec said blandly, still watching the TV, (having sneakily changed it in the two minutes she was asleep to one of those mind-numbing music videos that annoyed her), and Max tensed at his side. He knew what was coming, so he pulled his arm from around his shoulders and ran a hand through almost dry hair.

She sat up, turning to scowl at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's part three of the Maxie-Logan break-up ritual," Alec frowned, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. "First comes the pouty frowns and the slight angsting and the worries that you're putting him at unnecessary risk by dating him. Next, the attempts to restrict contact with him. Then the annoyance when he tries to call you. Followed by the 'it's for his own good' speech, and finally the actual break-up, which usually only lasts for about two weeks before another mission goes sideways and you realize how important he is to you." Part of Alec thought that she partly kept getting back with him after those sideways missions out of guilt, but he wasn't dumb enough to say that out loud.

"What do you know about it," She hissed, leaning around him to grab the remote and power down the TV mid-ear splitting chorus.

"Hello, I live here, remember? All of T.C. knows about it." Alec rolled his eyes, not even expending the energy it'd take to turn and look at her. Just kept staring at the TV, its blank face mirroring his own.

"Gimme your phone." She scowled, and he finally turned to look at her in annoyance.

"No way," Alec scowled right back. "Break up with him on your own minutes."

"I'm not going to break up with him!" She exclaimed.

It's funny how his mouth sometimes moved without his brain's input. "Well, you should."

Max froze and he wondered if he was really stupid enough to tread that path again. Shit.

"And why should I do that?" She demanded.

"Argument from six months ago still stands." He wouldn't look at her. Refused to look at her.

"Because I'm a _danger_ to him?"

Alec knew this could go nowhere but downhill, so he kept his mouth shut. But damn straight she was a danger to the Ordinary, and she knew it! She carried an anti-Logan agent in her blood, for chrissakes!

Alec's phone began chirping after that. She glanced down at his pocket, then back up at his bland face when he made no move to get it.

"Give me the phone, Alec."

"No way," He replied. He dove off the couch when she reached for him, 'cuz there was no way her hand was going into his pocket and that was final! The phone gave up on its ring and he finally relaxed from his place on the floor. "Eh, see? Too late now-"

The phone immediately began ringing again. Dammit, Logan! Be obsessive compulsive with somebody else's electronics! His annoyance was only compounded after that, 'cuz Max was on top of him, struggling for the phone and he was doing his best to bat her away.

"Give it to me!" She demanded.

He caught her hands, falling still for only a moment as he leered up at her. "Oh, Maxie, don't tempt me."

Max growled in frustration, wrenching her hands away from and slapping his shoulder before fighting again to reach his pocket.

"You are so annoying," He huffed, pushing her off of him and to the ground as he sat up. Only to land flat on his back once more as she sprang into him, her shoulder hitting him powerfully in the chest.

He stared up, dazed, at the ceiling, before frowning and rubbing at his poor, abused sternum and glancing at her in annoyance. "You're going to mess up your ribs even more, stupid."

The cell phone had given up once more, but her beeper was going off, and slim fingers were gliding into his pocket and this couldn't be good.

"Knock it off," He sat up, effectively halting her grasp, her fingers squeezed by the pockets of the cargo material. "Didn't your mom ever teach you to not reach into men's pockets?"

"Didn't have a mom," She replied blithely, settling back against his thighs.

"Really, from your manners, I never would have guessed." He scowled. So did she. Then her eyes lit in deviousness and he had the urge to bolt, but she was still sitting on his thighs, trapping him just as effectively as he had trapped her fingers.

Her right hand, free hand, came up and he stared mistrusting at it; like she'd dipped it in poison and was gonna use it to poke out his eyes or something.

So he totally wasn't expecting it when she stroked the mark upon his neck.

Logan picked up the phone with a frown. "Hey, I've been trying to reach you."

Max sounded a little breathless. "I know. Sorry. Alec was being a jerk. Had to steal his phone from him."

"Where did you go? I checked the mess hall… I thought maybe we could grab some lunch before I left, but you just disappeared. No one knew where you were." Logan trailed off, slightly accusing, glancing out the window to take in a setting sun. It was the one day he was guaranteed to see her and she'd just dropped off the face of the planet? To spend time with Alec, apparently?

"I know, I was ju-" Her voice cut off in a gasp, as a low moan that sounded suspiciously like someone he knew rang out in the background.

"What exactly are you two doing?" Logan demanded.

"Nothing," Max squeaked. Before Logan could continue, Max's voice raised a hair. "So, we'll see you tomorrow for that Eyes Only thing, right?"

"Yeah… I guess." Logan was frowning.

"Great!" Max said cheerfully. A bit too cheerfully; a bit high and fake. "See you then!"

Logan hung up on the dial tone with a sigh. They'd gone down this path before. There was nothing to worry about.

Max looked back down at Alec, her eyes dark, her face flushed, her palm rolling hard into the imprint of teeth one last time, her nails digging into the back of his neck. His hips slammed up into hers, making her gasp again (and really, how had she managed to scoot forward anyway?), before he melted, boneless, out of his arch and back into the shag carpet, releasing his grip on her knees. Her hands, phone still clenched in her left fist, steadied her sagging body against his bare shoulders, head hanging, eyes squeezed shut from the lingering rush of desire.

He was breathing heavily, but they were even, because so was she.

"Max?"

She grunted, leaning down into him, her cheek resting on his chest, just breathing, calming her heart rate. He must have taken her grunt as an urge to continue and she struggled to hear him through the pounding roar of blood.

His fingers curled into a fist at the small of her back, clenching the dark material of her shirt in long fingers. "You ever use that on me again and I'll never forgive you."

She grunted again. Fair enough. That was fighting dirty on a level that really should have made even her sick. She could feel disgusted later… when all the throbbing stopped.

"New rule?" He began, shifting under her, undoubtedly to ease some pressure.

She nodded against his chest. Lingering arousal made her hips move with his, so when his voice came it was deep and dark.

"We avoid each other as much as possible until the week, or however long it takes, is over."

Max nodded again and something inside of her started screaming. She kicked the panther out of her head. Nodded again.

God.

It hadn't even been 24 hours yet.


	3. Tuesday

A/N: Blarg. I have way too many projects goin' on. I never know what the muse will provide me with when I sit down. Not too much longer on Castaway, hurray!

* * *

_Tuesday_

* * *

"Can I just go on record as saying that I hate Peta?"

"Eh?"

"Nothing," Max muttered, pressing herself closer to the closet doors and away from the warmth of his body. Really, you'd think that in this day and age the well paid baddies of the world could afford to get some bigger closets in their super secret hide outs.

And that the heroes could be a little more patient… and a little less annoying.

"I'm bored," Alec whispered for what Max was sure was the one hundredth time.

Max ignored him, focusing on the voices raised in a heated debate just outside the closet door. The guards were really getting in to it about who was supposed to stick around during the designated "lunch" hour… Max wished they'd both just leave already; either go on lunch or go back to their rounds or _something_.

It was so hard to find good help these days…

Alec frowned at Max's deliberate attempts to ignore him and shoved the coats they were wedged between further away, grunted as they rebounded almost immediately. He finally caved, let the heavy jackets crowd around his broad shoulders as he realized it was a losing battle anyway. He slouched low beneath the closet bar, leaning back into the wall, his feet framing hers as he asked, "Wanna play a game?"

"Quiet," She hissed, opening the slats of the closet door just a hair. Yeah, they were still out there, lounging on plush furniture, scowling at each other. Max was beginning to think they were just using the argument as an excuse to be lazy and take an extended break in Councilman Chang's well-furnished, Victorian style study.

"Cooooome on, Maxie. Let's play a game." The light illuminated Alec's face, just for a second. She shut the slats once more, glancing back at him. His lazy lean actually put him at eye level. All the better to glare at him, then.

"I said be quiet."

"Would you rather talk about Logan?" He asked, reminding her of the last time they'd been stuck in a closet together, and how he'd spent a fairly large portion of the time grilling her on her relationship…

Not that he'd been interested or anything.

"I've got some choice things to say about him, this time." He added after a moment, because _this time_ Alec counted this mess (i.e. trapped in a closet) as _directly_ Logan's fault, whereas last time it'd only been _indirectly_ Logan's fault. The man had said no one would be at the good councilman's second home, and boy had he been wrong. An hour's drive out of Seattle at Oh-Dark-Thirty, cutting into his precious beauty sleep, all just so they could spend half an hour in a closet while the morning guards jonesed after some croissants? Sometimes Alec had to admit that his life really did kind of blow.

Max tended to agree. She shoved the thick coat on the right away in annoyance when it once again made an attempt to tickle her ear. Ugh. Who even wears fur anymore? Alec sucked in a breath, to say something more, or to sing or whistle or do something similarly asinine, when Max beat him to it. "Do you really want to play a game?"

He took a moment to think about it.

"I dunno. Are we going to be naked?"

She could almost feel his grin. God, she hated him... And then she added Logan to her 'List' as well. If it wasn't for him, she wouldn't be stuck here in the first place. Logan's file had said that Chang only came to his coastal home on the weekends, and so security would be minimal, and boy had he been wrong. If she and Alec made out, Logan would have no one to blame but himself, so really why _shouldn't_ she-

Wait.

Oh my god, what _the hell_ was she thinking?

"No," She finally grunted into the silence, her cheeks blazing. "It's called the quiet game."

Alec frowned slightly, and a quick check of his memory told him that Manticore had not taught him about this one. "Never heard of it." His frown twisted to a scowl; Alec never liked it when he didn't know something.

So Max helpfully supplied, "We say as little as possible for as long as possible and if you win, you get to walk out of this closet alive."

His scowl deepened, and for one shining moment she thought he was going to shut up. Then his annoyed voice made her bite her lip to stifle a groan.

"You think you're _soooo_ clever, don't you?"

She elbowed him hard in the ribs and he grunted. She suppressed a yelp when he pinched her ass, but only barely.

"What the hell was that?" She demanded, her voice a harsh whisper as her head whipped to the side so she could better glare at him over her shoulder.

"Nothing else was in reach," He was grinning again, the soft darkness making the expression even more wicked than usual. He watched her watching the corner of his mouth and his smile died slowly. "Something on my face?" And was reborn as something solemn, because they both knew there wasn't.

She shook herself out of whatever stupor she'd been wallowing in, her eyes flicked over his neck, and she turned back to whitewashed door once more, frowning. And shifted from one foot to the other in that awkward way that Alec had long ago associated with the beginnings of feminine arousal.

Oh, Christ.

Alec willed the guards to get a move on, because the coat closet suddenly seemed even smaller, her body suddenly seemed closer, and for the life of him, he just couldn't figure out why that could ever possibly be a bad thing.

His hand tentatively brushed across her shoulder before he could control it, slid down the dark material covering her arm with a little more surety. She didn't jump in surprise, 'cuz the small space made her hyperaware of his slightest movements; she'd felt his hand before he'd even laid it upon her.

"Alec," She warned. At least it was supposed to be a warning. She cursed internally when she realized how low and commanding and come-hither it'd sounded.

She didn't miss the way he leaned forward, his face too close to her hair. The way he breathed her in. And she didn't like how her eyes closed in response, how she fought the reaction to lean back into him.

"What are you doing?" She breathed.

Alec's eyes snapped back open.

"Nothing," He covered guiltily, pulling away.

She couldn't resist. She controlled her voice, but she couldn't control the amused expression that he couldn't see anyway. "Did you just sniff my hair?"

"No," He sounded even more guilty than he had before, and Max snorted. Alec's hand clapped over her mouth and he pulled her away from the door, back into his body, between his long legs, and before she could loudly protest, she realized how quiet the guards had become.

Hearts thudded wildly and they waited, Alec's hand still over her mouth, eyes trained on the door, wondering if the security detail would be busting in. After a moment the arguing resumed and they both slumped, Alec back into the wall, and Max back into Alec, her hands releasing their grips on the front of his thighs.

"You can let go of me now," sounded more like "Oomp mmph nmmph," cuz of the hand holding tightly to her mouth.

His wry chuckle compounded her annoyance. "I dunno, I think I like it better this. It's nice and quiet- hey, ow!" As she elbowed him awkwardly, awkward 'cuz of how close she was, in the ribs.

"That's not nice," He hissed into her ear, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Her head arched backwards and her eyes narrowed at the not at all unpleasant reaction… so her hands came up to pry his away from her face, in an attempt to break free of him. He held on, but mostly 'cuz he liked the way she wiggled against him as she fought to get his hand away from her face (he was still a guy, after all). She must have realized, because she fell still after a few moments, eyes wide right before they narrowed in disgust. He could practically hear the cogs turning in her mind and he knew if he didn't let go soon, she'd find a way to make him.

He was just about to concede graciously when her tongue ran the length of his palm.

He covered something that was very much _not_ disgust up with a look of horror. "Eeew! Gross, Max!"

Something muffled and amused came from behind his hand and though he wasn't entirely sure what it was that she said, he knew it'd probably piss him off if he did know, 'cuz even muffled, it sounded bitchy.

He released her with a scowl, wiping his palm on the back of her dark turtleneck, the one that she _always_ broke out for secret ops, as she stepped away from him. "I'll have you know, I haven't washed my hands in three days," His eyes narrowed as she jerked and his hand scraped against something hard and metallic on her back.

Max's head whipped around to him in horror and he smiled blithely, refusing to admit to the lie. That's what she gets for fighting dirty.

"What?!" She demanded.

"Don't talk so loud," He scowled before smirking, "or I'll find another way to shut you up," He added a filthy grin, and he was expecting her to fall silent, huffing. The blush kind of surprised him.

God damn, he needed to get out of this closet.

He thought, almost longingly, of the first time they'd been stuck together in a closet, trying to score some old Star Wars film, and how platonic and innocent the whole thing had seemed in comparison to all the tension thick in the air, now. And how much bigger that closet had been…

"Wanna make out?" He attempted a joke, to dispel the awkwardness.

"I will kill you," She said after a momentary pause that made him glare in suspicion at the back of her head, wondering if she'd actually considered it.

And wondered why he was trying so hard to fight it.

'Cuz she was still dating Logan. And they were just friends. And god _damn_, she smelled so good. He was just about to lean forward and put all those dirty thoughts to good use… when his eyes darted downwards and he squinted and finally recognized what it was that he'd scraped his hand against. And all thought came screeching to a halt.

"What the… Is that a zipper?!"

Max shot him a glance, half amused, half annoyed. "Yeah? What about it?"

"Why is it on the back of your shirt?" He demanded and was dismayed by the wonderful mental images that came with the discovery of the zipper in such an easily accessible place.

"Why not?" She shrugged.

"Whaddaya mean, why not?" Because he could unzip it. And his hands could slide underneath the dark material. And then around and- He grunted, "That's the most ridiculous place for a zipper I've ever seen."

"What are you talking about?!" She glanced back at him. "I love this shirt!"

"I mean, how do you zip it up every morning?" He tried to imagine it, but his mind couldn't wrap around the image of her leaning over, fighting to reach the zipper in such an awkward position. She'd probably need help. And that thought brought a slew of other images with it and Alec's lip twitched in an effort to control the lusty kind of amusement that he tried to reserve for females that weren't repressed, bitchy, best-friend types.

Max rolled her eyes and didn't answer. When she did speak, it made Alec scowl and ruined all the nice little fantasies he was trying not to have. "Besides, it works really well when Logan needs to take pictures of my runes."

He scowled at the thought of Logan's hand reaching out, tugging at the small piece of dark metal, drawing it down- the red haze of rage held a tinge of the animal, so Alec tried to temper it by frowning thoughtfully and saying helpfully, "I could do that, you know. You wouldn't have to go so far. Plus, it's not like he just doesn't send all the photos back to T.C. anyway." He hoped he didn't sound too hopeful. Or too petulant.

"Logan would prefer if he did it." She'd brought it up, once, a long time ago, and Logan's stifled, hurt silence had been answer enough. Not that she'd tell Alec she'd suggested the very thing, anyway. "He's my boyfriend, remember?"

How could he forget? Logan made a point to mention it, either aloud, or through some schmoopy, physical contact with Max every time Alec caught the two together. Part of Alec wondered why Max didn't notice how, for a non-catty person, Logan could run with the best of the transgenics when it came to territorial behavior.

Then he wondered if he could get away with-

She could feel his hand move and her icy voice made him smile. "Touch that zipper and I will destroy you."

"Fine," He shrugged. Then added a muttered "Spoil-sport," that made her smile. Right before she frowned.

"Do you hear that?" She asked.

Alec shrugged. "I don't hear anything."

"That's exactly what I mean." The slats slid open once more. And it was just as she'd thought. The guards were gone. Who knows how much time she'd wasted arguing with Alec. God, it was like he opened his mouth and a beam of annoyingness transfixed her mind, made her unable to focus on anything else.

Not that she'd been imagining what might have happened if his hand had reached that zipp-

"They're gone," Her voice was unnecessarily harsh. "Let's get going."

"But we didn't even have a weird, claim-fueled make out session," Alec pouted and Max tried hard to figure out if he was joking or not. And which possibility annoyed her more.

Max stomped out of the closet, not even waiting for Alec to pick up the backpack from the ground at their feet and shoulder it. Everything else went smoothly; placing the bugs, slipping down the hall, to the next room, a small living room or whatever, and repeating the process before finally slipping out of the house, darting across the well-manicured lawn and towards Max's bike, hidden on the other side of the property's wall, in the surrounding trees. If they were lucky, driving at a respectable speed, they'd be back in Seattle a little after 10.

Alec slide onto the bike behind her, his arms wrapped tightly around her, and his breath washed across her hair. "Well, that wasn't so bad," He shrugged, and she could feel the movement of muscle against her back.

The digital display of her pager read 9:30 when the motorcycle came to a stop before Sandeman's home.

Alec didn't say anything about the reckless driving. He was too busy steeling himself for the upcoming meet with the man that'd gotten him trapped in another closet.

* * *

"Good job, Max." Logan beamed at her, ignoring Alec's _Hey, what about me?_ "Chang's got connections with every gangster and arms dealer this side of the Rockies. We definitely needed some surveillance in there. He always meets with-"

"We read the file," Alec interrupted. "Meets the big bads at his super secret home away from home that no one knows about, but yet, your superior hacker skills somehow found." His voice descended into annoyance. "Course, in the file, you said security only works on the weekends when he's there."

Logan frowned softly, fighting to control his obvious irritation. "I'm sorry, what exactly are you trying to say?"

_Just that you're not as omnipotent as you think you are. _Alec stared hard at him and ignored Max's swift kick in the side of his shin, a warning for him to keep his aggravation to himself. 'Cuz heaven forbid her little honey bear ever be wrong about anything.

"Well?" Logan demanded.

"Nothin'," Alec shrugged. Max relaxed. Alec dug himself in deeper. "If you want me stuck in a closet with your girlfriend, that's your deal." He smiled slowly. "Just don't come crying to me when-"

Max's bony elbow slammed into the side of his ribs. He glared at her, (subtle, Max, real subtle), rubbing his ribs before finishing, "When she spends the entire night bitching, I was going to say."

Max blushed slightly and Logan frowned at her reaction. Alec interrupted before Captain Soul could break out his powers of schmoopiness. "Anything else you might have left out? Like, security cameras, anything like that? Something that might bite us in the ass later?"

Logan frowned. "I already told you, the place is his haven of retreat. No security cameras, minimal security (Logan ignored Alec's coughed 'yeah right'). Nothing that can be traced back to him; which is why we needed surveillance in there. Trust me. There's nothing to worry about."

* * *

The tinny tones of the Star Spangled Banner cut in just as he was coming to the punch-line. His smile was strained but still charming as he politely excused himself from the table.

"I was just having a delightful sit down with the Chief of Police and his wife," Junior Councilman, next heir-apparent to the Mayor, Jimmy Chang's obsidian eyes were hard and strained but his smile never flagged. At least… not at first. He paused as the person on the other end of the line spoke in rushed, clipped tones. The smile finally slipped away from thin lips and there was no mistaking the anger building and burning in dark eyes.

"What do you mean 'we might have something to worry about'?" He hissed. More furious speaking from the other end and Chang rolled his neck in annoyance. He cut off the speaker with a clipped, "I won't be able to be out there until morning. Try not to screw anything else up before then, will you?"

The phone flipped shut with a satisfying thwack. Short, thin fingers ran through meticulously combed black hair and immediately regretted it.

"Any problems?" The Chief's blonde wife smiled warmly as he slipped back into his seat.

"Nothing I can't handle," Chang smiled winningly, and the woman's smile faltered. She'd spend the rest of the day wondering why one of the city's most respectable and well-known citizens put her so in mind of a blood-thirsty shark.

* * *

"Anything else you need us to do for you?" Alec grunted. And even he was amazed at how that'd sounded so like a double meaning of the 'I'm better than you' sort. Max gave him The Look and he tried to reign in the part of himself that cringed; that part of himself that told him he was hers. The stupid part.

"I think we're good," Logan frowned, because even he was put off by how aggressive Alec seemed. "I'll monitor Chang's phone calls. Shouldn't hear anything until the weekend, but if I do, I'll give you a call, let you know when the next deal is going down."

Max shifted uncomfortably. Like she didn't have enough to do this week-

"Max, this is important." Logan reminded. Alec turned to watch Max's face as she was sucked in by the Log-monster's powers of mind control. Alec huffed in annoyance as Max promised the man that she and Alec would wait for his phone call. God. Why'd she'd have to include him in her quest for approval?

* * *

"How'd it go?" Peta asked, watching Max stomp into her office, take one look at the newest piece of paper Peta was in the process of placing on her desk and storm right back out, down the hallway and towards the quiet calm of the bathroom. Alec barely avoided her before sighing and moving into the office. Maybe he should have kept that 'quest for approval' thought to himself…

"It wasn't a total bust." Alec frowned, answering Peta's question as he shrugged out of his leather jacket. "We completed one mission… But Maxie promised Logey-bear we'd wait on standby for his beck and call to fight the evil doers." Alec controlled the huff of annoyance, tossing his jacket across the back of one of the 'bitch' chairs (so named, 'cuz they were directly before Max's desk, and were notorious for being the place she plopped you into right before she started bitching at you).

"Boring," Peta rolled her eyes, leaning back into Max's desk, her arms folded across her chest, her voice taking on a gleeful note. "I wanted to know the dirty details about the hot make out session!"

Alec blinked in confusion.

Peta watched him for a moment before straightening, flicking thick bangs away from her eyes. "I know those teeth marks don't belong to Marcy or Janna. Max already told me about that claim."

Alec glanced at her. Before finally slouching to the worn leather couch shoved against the wall, slumping in to it, and admitting grudgingly, "Closet."

Peta's resounding laugh made him grimace in annoyance.

"Before you get any bright ideas, there wasn't actually any 'making out'. Just a lot of weird, awkward tension and even more fighting to cover it up." He squeezed the bridge of his nose, eyes shutting as he felt the beginnings of a headache develop.

"No hot make-out session?!" Peta demanded in horror. "Why not?"

"Whaddya mean, why not?" Alec retaliated, sitting up, his hand falling away from his face. "She's got a boyfriend! And she's my best friend!"

Peta grimaced. "Bummer. And here I thought you were a man."

"Y'know," He grunted in annoyance, leveling her with a stare. "Contrary to what your dirty little mind is thinking, getting Max naked isn't very high up on my list of priorities."

"But you're not denying that is actually on your list," Peta smirked, lifting herself from her lean on Max's desk, crossing over to him.

He smirked, grabbing at her, pulling her down into his lap and ignoring her disgusted protests. "Yep, right behind you."

"That is so gross," Peta hissed, frowning down at him. She glanced again at the mark and her voice became teasing as she flicked the imprint with cool fingers. "And P.S.? It's called a turtleneck. Buy one. Seriously."

He opened his mouth to retort when the door opened, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and a harsh voice cut through the air, freezing his blood.

"Get off of him,"

Peta's back tensed. She turned and it was indeed Max glowering from the doorway, only a few scant inches away. Alec grimaced and Peta yanked her hand away from his neck quickly.

Peta smiled slowly, entreatingly. "Umm… Max, you know I'm a lesbian, right?"

"_Now_," Max's hard voice brooked no argument. Crap. Kitty Max was coming out to play. Peta lifted herself off of stupid-face Alec (this was totally his fault, so she could be as childish as she wanted, thank you very much), slowly, not wanting to make any fast movement that could come across as a threat.

Fucking claims. She almost wished Alec would just say 'screw it' and bite the crap out of their fearless leader and put all the animal uncertainty to rest with a full-blown, permanent-type mating. Peta hated that something within her made her slink past her not-right-now friend, head ducked, avoiding eye contact. Max barely paid her any attention, still watching Alec.

Peta fairly smiled when he heard his commanding tone. "Max, come here."

That's the problem when you claim someone who's your equal. The instability works both ways until everything settles and the person who made the claim reigned supreme.

Max glared down at him, and he frowned right back up. Before his hand shot out and grasped her wrist, yanking her down into his lap, filling the void that Peta had left. She protested loudly, but one thing Alec was good at was ignoring her protests.

"If I promise to get you some more of that smelly, bubble crap that you like, will you stop your bitching and calm down?" He demanded.

She fell still with a glare, another thing he was good at ignoring. His arm tightened around her and he slumped into back the couch, his head falling backwards once more… and Kitty Max calmed as she got an eyeful of the mark she'd left upon him.

She resisted the urge to lean forward and move her mouth over the mark. She'd made a promise after all. And oh god, that was the reason why she wasn't lapping at Alec's neck? 'Cuz she'd promised him? Not because she didn't want to or anything like that, just 'cuz she'd made a promise? God, she needed to get her priorities straight.

His voice startled her from her thoughts. "Maybe… maybe we should just revoke the whole thing now," His head was still angled towards the ceiling, his eyes shut, and Max frowned at how tired he sounded.

If Max had an ounce of sense in her body, she'd agree and revoke her claim right now and this would finally all be over. Max opened her mouth to do just that, so she was surprised when she heard herself saying, "Not until Marcy gives up,"

"I haven't seen Marcy in two days," Alec glanced at her, head unmoving.

Max frowned, part of her wondering if maybe she should get off of his lap now. "I stopped her on her way to your place yesterday. Believe me, she hasn't given up yet." Then she did slide off his lap, sitting by his side instead, glancing at her hands. "Well… maybe… Maybe I can revoke the claim and you can just be honest with her and tell her you don't want her."

His look of horror annoyed her. His winning smile even more so. "Nah, you're probably right. A few more days should do it."

They fell into silence, trying hard not to be annoyed at each other and not succeeding very well.

Finally, Alec grunted in to the silence. "Wanna make out?"

She didn't have to say anything. Her look said it all.

"What?" He asked, defensive. "It's my new catch phrase."

She rolled her eyes, her arms folding across her chest. The movement caught his attention and he glanced over her… and his hand lifted and he reached for the hemline of her shirt. She leapt from the couch like it was on fire, her eyes wide.

"What are you doing?!"

"I was going to check your ribs," He replied in confusion. "Is that a problem?"

Yes. "No... They're fine." They hurt like hell, but they were getting better and Max was pretty sure that she didn't have a fracture after all… So she didn't need Alec's warm fingertips on her skin reminding her that apparently two years without sex somehow trumped the pain of bruised ribs.

She turned her back on him, walked back over to her desk. She frowned at the list Peta had left her for night detail. Most of them were females (Jeez, Peta), but there were a couple of guys. Max wondered if any of them were Sara's (or was it Clara's?) breeding partner. Not that she could avoid Peta's choice, anyway. Really, this was all just a formality. Peta would go and tell the trannie's themselves; she was, after all, head of the night watch for a reason. The list was just for their ever-growing record books.

"So, what's on the agenda today, Fearless Leader?"

"I really wish you guys would stop calling me that." She frowned distractedly before placing the list back down and glancing back at him. "Not much. Paperwork. Sorting. Standby for random transgenic rescues and Familiar ass kickings. What about you?"

Alec scowled. "Luke called me this morning. Brock wants to talk again."

Max pushed away the tinge of annoyance. And she understood why Alec was scowling. Talking to Brock was like talking to a brick. A canny, dangerous, stubborn brick. Last time she'd made the attempt, things hadn't gone so well. In part because she'd demanded that the X-5 stop placing all his requests through Alec and ignoring her presence, but mostly because she'd backed up her words with some force when the man had rolled his eyes. Things didn't progress beyond some hard shoving, but only because Alec had stepped in and pulled Brock away, talking in low, clipped tones. Max had been more annoyed at herself for letting the blonde transgenic get to her then for Alec's interference. It was just as well Alec was going to be the one to talk to him today.

Brock was by no means the biggest or meanest or most alpha X-5 in T.C… But he was one of the smartest. Someone that Alec insisted was not anybody they needed on their bad side. And Max didn't know if she could look at his smug, narrow face without popping it right in the nose.

Even if he was Zane's twin.

"Guess I'll go find him then, see what he's bitching about now." Alec pushed himself from the couch… and paused, still staring hard at her.

"We still avoiding each other?" He asked into the silence.

Eyes Only mission was over… so guess that was it, then. No more Alec for the rest of the week… Goin' cold turkey, if you will, from the crazy rush of warm endorphins that flooded her system when she was in the same room with him.

"Yeah," She shrugged. "I'll call you when I get word from Logan."

His nod was perfunctory as he moved out the door.

The loss of him was an ache.

"Alec?"

His head popped back through the door immediately. "Yeah?"

"You doin' anything tonight?"

"You mean besides avoiding you?" He came back into the room, just enough to lean in the doorway.

Right. Avoidance, Max reminded herself. That was the plan.

"Feel like sneakin' out of T.C. for some booze?"

Fuck the plan. It was a stupid plan. Now, beer, _that_ was a good plan.

His lips pursed, his eyes swinging upwards in thought before he nodded. "Yeah, okay. See you tonight."

Max smiled softly and turned back to her desk.

And then frowned in confusion.

What the hell just happened?

* * *

It's something that Alec was wondering to himself as well, after he'd grabbed some lunch and was scouring T.C. for the man and the conversation that would undoubtedly serve as the highlight of the day.

Well… maybe not the _highlight_ of the day. Maybe a close second to the awkward closet hotne- Oh, there he is.

Brock was waiting outside the familiar red brick of Alec's own building… apparently waiting for him to make an appearance. Alec' eyes glanced across him, in his customary quick-analysis of threat levels.

Brock was not thin. Nor was he overly-muscled. If you could picture a frat-boy, inevitably Brock is the type of person that would come to mind. Young, wiry, blonde, with intelligence enough, but lacking the brains to keep himself out of trouble.

"Brock," Alec nodded in greeting, fairly relaxed.

"494," Brock nodded back.

Alec didn't bristle. Who's got that kind of energy? "You been haranguing Luke again?"

"I just asked him where I could find you, I wasn't expecting him to call you right then," Brock shrugged. Alec knew Luke and that didn't surprise him. The droopy eared transhuman didn't much care for Brock in the first place and, in all honesty, would use any excuse to call Alec… sometimes just to chit-chat.

Alec perched on the guardrail, keeping the higher ground to Brock's seated position upon his stoop. "You needed something?"

Brock glanced at dirty fingernails; probably been playin' with cars again. "You guys find something for me to do, yet?"

"Jeez, man, I've been searching for you just so you could ask me _that_? I told you, when we find something-"

"I'm bored," Brock stood. So did Alec. "Why doesn't Max trust me?" Alec opened his mouth to respond, but Brock cut him off with a wave of his hand, "And before you even start bull-shitting me, I know that's why she's purposefully been keeping me off of every detail I sign up for,"

Alec really hoped that Brock had figured that out on his own and that there weren't any loose lips on the Command Staff. "You know," He pointed out, "maybe if you'd stop calling her a bitch behind her back, she'd be more inclined to like you."

"Yeah, well, isn't that a Catch-22, 'cuz if she was more inclined to like me, maybe I'd stop calling her a bitch behind her back," Brock's quirked smile annoyed Alec. The shorter man's face fell back into neutrality and he stared hard at Alec. "Can't you talk to her? Let her know she can trust me?"

"Weren't you the one that tried to talk people into not listening to her when you first got here?" Alec leveled him with an annoyed stare.

"That was months ago," Brock protested. "And I was still kind of bitter that she mistook me for her traitor-" Brock tapered off at Alec's look. "I mean… mistook me for her brother." Brock huffed when Alec's face remained bland. "Come on, even you gotta be a little bit bitter about all that time we spent in Psy Op's 'cuz of them. I can't help that."

Alec frowned and rubbed his temples in annoyance, looking away from the man's knowing green gaze. "No, I'm not."

"Not even a little?"

"Brock,"

"Okay, so you've had time to get used to her. I still have trouble looking at her without the words 'rat' and 'traitor' flashing through my mind," Brock scowled.

"Plenty of other people don't have that problem." Alec shrugged.

"Yeah, but some do," Brock pointed out. "And I'm thinking that you'd rather not I start talking to those people, am I right?"

Alec's shoulder squared off and he stood a little bit taller. "You tryin' to threaten me?"

"No," Brock shook his head. "I think you make a good enough Commander." He didn't mention Max, and Alec immediately got what he was saying. And pretended like he hadn't. He didn't want to lead T.C. and he sure as hell didn't want Max ousted from her position.

"Good," Alec cracked his neck swiftly from side to side. "Just remember the part where I'm only a Second 'cuz Max asked me to be." His eyes narrowed and his voice lowered and there was no mistaking the darkness in his tone. "And if you ever try to mess that up, I'll rip your spine out, capice?"

Brock's face twisted. "Gross, dude."

Alec relaxed, shrugging. "Yeah, well, I'm hoping that the mental image will stick with you and keep your mouth shut should you happen upon any of those people you might want to share a nancy-pants, little-girl, bitch-fest with."

It wasn't totally an idle threat. Alec had spent a lot of time in the past six months talking with his fists; the only type of conversation that some of the more aggressive anti-Max trannies understood was the kind that Alec growled at them as he shoved their faces into concrete. So far it was workin' pretty well for him. He hadn't been called one of the best at Manticore for nothing. And so far, none of those trannies had been stupid enough to try again… or smart enough to band together and try and jump him. He didn't like what an unstable element Brock could be in a powder keg of unhappy transgenics caged in by the military, led by a woman that was abrasive on a good day and, to top it all off, that they'd been trained to hate.

"Nice dental work." Brock's eyes skipped over Alec's neck, effectively changing the subject.

"Thanks," Alec gave nothing away, still staring, steely-eyed, at the blonde man.

Brock glanced away. On a good day, Brock could come close to the kind of force that the animal within Alec could put behind his hazel gaze on his worst. It wasn't a good day for Brock, and it wasn't exactly a bad day for Alec. "So, did Max's pearly whites lay those on you, or what?"

Alec started out of his stare. "What?" His hand glanced across the mark and he cursed internally as Brock's eyes followed the automatic gesture knowingly.

"You guys mated or something?" Brock smirked.

And Alec, always adept at reading people, blinked in confusion, his hand dropping back to his side.

"And you would care because?"

"No reason," Brock shrugged, his hands dipping into his pockets.

"Well, then I guess I don't have to tell you," Alec grunted, trying not to be annoyed. Brock shrugged. Alec rolled his eyes. "Look, I'll talk to Max and I'll get you a job. Just… stop your bitching. And stop harassing Luke."

"He likes it," Brock scoffed. "Besides, he'd use any excuse to call you. Him n' Mole got their whole little Alec fan-club, man-crushes going-"

"Do you want me to talk to Max or not?" Alec asked in annoyance. 'Cuz if anything, Luke had always been one of Logan's greatest fans.

Brock nodded and Alec pretended he hadn't seen the hope flash through the other man's eyes.

At the end of the day, most transgenics just wanted a chance to flex their muscle; use what all those kooky little labcoats had given them. When you have a brain that moves a mile a minute, sitting around waiting for the bombs to fall was a kind of death of the slowest and worst kind. So yeah, he could sympathize with Brock a little. Even feel a little bit bad for the guy. And he could talk to Max, if it meant it kept Zane's twin out of trouble.

After they went out drinking…

And why were they going out drinking again? Alec bounded up the stairwell of his apartment building. Weren't they supposed to be avoiding each other or something?

But he had to see her. _Needed_ to see her- and that was incredibly creepy, let's not think that anymore. Alec let himself into his apartment and set about looking for that form fitting black t-shirt that Max always stared hard at whenever he wore it.

* * *

"I need you tonight."

"Yes!" Peta pumped her fist in excitement. "Finally!"

"Not like that, stupid." Max scoffed in annoyance. "I sort of…" She trailed off into a mumble that even Peta's gifted transgenic ears could not make out.

"Sorry," The dark haired woman blinked. "Didn't catch that."

"I said," Max huffed, "That I kind of asked Alec to go out bar hopping tonight and I need you to come with us."

"For what?" Peta asked in confusion. "Protection?"

"Exactly," Max nodded in agreement.

Peta blinked a few times before understanding hit. "Oooh, you sly devil, you. Using the lesbian to protect you from the lips of Alec."

"Just don't let me do anything stupid, okay?" Max huffed.

"Define stupid," Peta grinned wickedly. "Preferably with lots of adverbs and adjectives of the 'hot', 'hard', 'heavy', and 'wet' variety."

"Just forget it," Max hissed, turning away

"I'm just kiddin', Max." Peta smiled ruefully. "What time do you want me to pick you up?"

But Max was already stomping off. "Hey! When are we supposed to meet up, then?" Peta called after her. Max was already out the door and Peta finally just shrugged. Eh. What's the worst that could happen?

Peta was no help, Max scowled to herself. Jokester like her would find amusement if she found that Max had dragged Alec into a corner and had a beer-fueled make out session with him. Would probably attempt to record it on her cellphone, no less. Max would have to find somebody else, to-

Max's eyes narrowed. Y'know. Why did she even have to go out with Alec? She could find something else to do. Spend time with some_one_ else.

Her beeper went off and she glanced down.

It was Alec.

But it was still early. No way could they start drinking now. By the time night rolled around they'd both be, while not drunk 'cuz that was a physical impossibility, sufficiently inhibition-lowered to do something good and stupid.

The beeper quit after the first page. Alec usually trusted her to hit him back almost immediately. Not like-

And that's when Max knew what she was going to do.

And part of her laughed, because it was such a complete role reversal from what usually happened, it was almost ludicrous.

It was less then an hour later when a motorcycle pulled up to the front of Sandeman's house once more. Logan frowned in confusion, peering out of a spotless window. And then he smiled.

He opened the door only moments before she reached out to do it herself. "Hey, you."

"Hey," She slipped past him and into Joshua's old digs. 'Course, it was way different then when Josh had lived here. Cleaned up. More modern. Didn't smell like ham. For the most part, it was a vast improvement.

Logan shut the front door, turning to her. "So, to what do I owe this rare surprise?"

Max quelled the guilt, shifting in her muddy boots on his nice, vacuumed rug. So, she couldn't get out of T.C. much, so what? Did he think it was easy evading all those policemen? Then she quelled even more guilt, 'cuz the only reason she was even here was because she was avoiding Alec and getting out of T.C. and evading policeman for a bar date she hadn't meant to make.

"Got anything to eat?" She asked, 'cuz it was such a nice alternative to the truth.

* * *

He got tired of waiting for her to call. Got tired of lounging around his apartment, and then subsequently, her apartment, waiting for her to show up to their not-a-date-just-a-hangout. So he went out and got some beer of his own. And met up with an old friend on the way back to her place an hour later, one he'd called about some merchandise… And waited in the darkness, not at all in a loser-like capacity, for her to show up so he could lay on the guilt.

He'd left the front door cracked; a heads up to let her know that he was here. He didn't need to. She'd have known anyway.

He was lounging against her kitchen counter when she came in.

"D'you forget we had a date?" His voice was flat in the near darkness, as he glanced at the clock. It was almost eight o'clock. Plenty of time for them to still go out… if he hadn't known that she was avoiding him and he wasn't annoyed on top of that.

"Yup, totally forgot." She flicked on the lights and shrugged out of her leather jacket. "My bad."

"Yeah," He glanced away, put his beer down on the counter. He looked back up at her back as she moved into the living room, his face fixed in a frown. "Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit on that one."

Her jacket got tossed over the back of her couch. "And what's that supposed to mean?" She turned to stare challengingly at him over the breakfast bar. And then paused.

She hated it when he wore that shirt.

"Max, either you're avoiding me or you're not. Make up your damn mind, already." Alec's voice was hard and saved her from the heavy stare.

"Fine," She shrugged, glancing away from him. "I'm avoiding you… So maybe you should leave."

"No way," He scoffed.

"What?!" Her head whipped back towards him.

He came around the corner, advancing on her, pretending not to notice the way she staggered backwards, her eyes darting again across his shoulders. Then he paused, his face twisting. "You smell like spaghetti sauce and potpourri." His eyes widened in horror. "You used Logan as an excuse to avoid me?!"

"What?! No!!"

"Oh, you did too!"

"He's my boyfriend! I'm allowed to randomly ditch people to go hang out with my boyfriend!" She protested, trying not to sound guilty.

Something that looked a little like hurt flashed across his face before he covered it with a steely-eyed smile. "Jeez, Max, and here I thought we were friends. Does 'Bro's before Ho's' mean nothing to you?"

She sighed. "Look, I'm sorry, okay? It's just everything's all weird right now and…" Oh, god, was she really going to be honest? "And… I just didn't know how good of an idea you n' me going out drinking was." Guess so.

Alec paused in surprise. Before he shook his head. "Ya know… you could have just told me you didn't want to hang out."

"So you could react exactly like you're reacting right now?" She demanded. "Excuse me for tryin' to pass _that_ up."

The silence was tense for a few moments before she finally grunted, "Did you at least save me some beer?"

He shoved past her and collapsed onto her worn sofa. "In the fridge."

"And just for the record," His voice followed her into the kitchen, clearly heard over the sound of the fridge door opening. "You suck."

"Dually noted," She said softly to herself, pulling a bottle from the six-pack placed within.

"What was that?"

"I said, did you talk to Brock?" She moved back into the living room proper, cracking off the top of the bottle.

Alec shrugged, scratching the top of his head. "Yeah, nothing exciting though. Same old, same old. When are we gonna give him something important to do, when are you going to trust him…" He paused as she got comfortable next to him. "If we really are mated…"

"What?" She demanded, turning to look at him with wide eyes, the bottle paused only inches from her lips.

He shook his head ruefully. "Apparently the rumor mill is strong as ever." He scowled. And if he found out that Mole had anything to do with it, he'd skin the scaly lizard's hide.

"You don't think…" Max trailed off, lowering her bottle back to her lap. If Peta had breathed a word to anyone, she'd yank every single one of that Grecian girl's hairs out, one by one.

"Anyway, I didn't say anything. And he's not stupid; he knows if we were really mated, I'd have broken him in half for talking shit about you." It was just fortuitous happenstance that Brock had fixated on a mating and not bothered to ask about a less stable, less permanent, one-sided claim.

Max's scowl made a reappearance and she took a swig of the beer. "What'd he say?"

"Nothing new or exciting. In so many words; blah, blah, blah, she's an 09er, yadda, yadda, how can you trust her, etc. and so forth, we twins gotta stick together." Alec sprawled back into the corner of the couch, and it was only natural that Max would lean in to him. "To tell you the truth, I think he was… jealous?"

"Be serious." Max smiled into his chest, taking another careful sip.

"Hey," Alec shrugged and her head rose and fell with the movement. "I am serious. I think ever since you shoved him around, he's kind of got the hots for you."

"Gross," Max hissed, sitting up to place her bottle on the coffee table. "He looks like my brother."

Alec's body tensed at her side and she fell still, turning back to look at him. "Alec,"

"Relax, Max," He rolled his eyes, "I know you don't have any romantic type feelings for me. It's mutual, trust me."

"Oh," She looked back down and leaned, again, into him. Her hand curled into a fist above his heart. "Well. That's good."

"Tell me about it." He glanced down and she was glancing up and it just wasn't even fair how close her face was.

"Max?" He asked softly, after a beat.

"Yeah?" She breathed.

His hand crept up her neck, his thumb swept across her jawline, her chin, pressed gently against parted lips for just a moment, before angling her face up just a hair more. "Is this one of those bad ideas you were worried about?" He murmured, his eyes following the pink dart of her tongue, wetting her lips.

Bad idea? Oh, right. Max cleared her throat and pulled away as he was leaning in. He made a tortured sound and his head fell back into the cushions.

"This sucks," He grunted, staring at the ceiling. "Maybe I should just find Marcy and-"

Her lips crashed over his and his mind went perfectly blank. He blinked stupidly at her for a moment before he lost himself, his fingers tangling in her dark hair, his hips arching up to meet hers as she straddled him, her mouth hungry and demanding.

His fingers found that dark metallic zipper almost immediately. The sound of it being drawn down made her thighs tighten at his side, her hands grasp harder at his shoulders, her mouth open in a gasp as warm hands splayed against the exposed skin of her back.

Really, it was too easy to twist and lay her back into the cushions, to pull the dark turtleneck from her body and let his eyes rove appreciatively over her, just barely registering the black and yellowed flesh of her side. For him to collapse, gently, back into her with a groan, letting his hand trail down the warm skin of her uninjured side and across the rough material of her jeans, holding her leg up around his waist. To move his mouth back over hers and draw those noises from her. She still tasted a bit like spaghetti, a bit like beer, but her tongue stroked his teasingly, so who cares?

"Maaax," A familiar voice rang out from the entry. "You still need me to run defense with Alec tonight?"

Alec froze over her and their eyes opened, connected, as he pulled away from her slightly. Defense?

Max was going to fucking kill Peta.

"Max?" Peta trailed around the couch and reared back as she caught sight of them. "Oh, Jesus!"

She shook her head in rueful amusement after a momentary pause while they were still staring, shocked, at her. "Man, I have the worst luck with you guys."

Max's head dropped back into the couch. Alec's head dropped down into her neck. And he couldn't help that he nipped gently at the exposed flesh. Her eyes shut as her arms tightened around him and-

"Helloooo, standing right here." Peta was still watching them, her arms crossed. Max sighed and her arms slowly unwrapped from around him.

"Gimme a minute," Alec grunted into the curve of Max's neck, shifting against her. She hissed and her hips rolled upwards and his grunt turned into another one of those teasing nips and-

"Yeah, I would, but I'm scared a minute is all it'll take for you two to depants," Peta said blandly. "So, if you don't mind, I'm just gonna stand here 'til you get Alec Jr. back under control."

"Some friend you are," Alec muttered, and Max pretended that she hadn't heard him and that she couldn't feel his lips moving against her skin. She stared hard at the ceiling, willing her heart to calm, for the ache between her legs to fade. For a shirt to magically appear and cover her.

He finally grunted and sat back up, releasing her, allowing her to swing her legs off of the couch and touch ground once more. He stood stiffly, not watching as Max retrieved her shirt from the floor, and shot Peta an annoyed look.

"You can thank me later," She said blandly.

"Let me thank you now," He snagged her by the elbow and dragged her to the door and Peta got the vague sensation that she was about to be thrown out. So she pulled Alec into the hallway with her and shut the door behind them.

"Think about it, Alec. Is this really the way you want her?" She demanded.

"What are you-"

"So, what started your hot little make-out session?" Peta asked flatly. "Did you two finally admit your secret, burning love for each other? Or were you just close enough to make her horny? Or did you open your mouth and say something stupid and make her jealous?"

Alec fell still with a frown.

Peta rolled her eyes. "That's what I thought. I mean, c'mon, Alec, I like you guys and I get that you're the better fit than Logan… but you're still my friend. One I'd rather not see turned black and blue after Max comes back to herself and finds you in her bed with memories of how you so didn't even attempt to fight her off."

Alec leaned back against the wall with a grunt. "What happened to Peta; cheerleader for Max and Alec make-out sessions extraordinaire?"

"That Peta was just a joking version of your overactive imagination." The dark haired woman smiled blandly. "Now, come on, I'll let you buy me a beer."

"Yeah right," Alec growled in aggravation. "More like I'll let you buy me an entire fucking bar."

Peta shrugged as they made their way down the hallway. "That works too,"

Max leaned back into the door, her eyes falling shut, the dark material of her turtleneck still clasped to her breasts. Dammit, Peta. Thank you, Peta. I hate you, Peta. She sighed and pushed herself out of her lean, peeling the rest of her clothes from her body as she made her way to a cold shower that wouldn't help much but might distract her long enough to-

She paused near the bedroom doorway and smiled at the new set of sheets folded atop her comforter.

Long enough to forget.

* * *

"I can't forget," Alec moaned into his hands, slouched over the bar.

Peta patted his back consolingly. "Who'da thunk that the lips of Max would be a bad thing?"

"This sucks," Alec sat up, taking another long swig of the liquid that Peta was trying to buy back his favor with.

"I know," Peta sighed, taking a drink from her own bottle. "Just think, if I'd had my cellphone out, all the money I could have made with that little make-out session of yours,"

Alec's eyes slide to hers and Peta rushed to reassure him, "Oh, not from you guys, I'd never blackmail my friends… I'd have offered copies of it for sale around T.C."

Alec blinked. "Well… thanks… I guess."

Peta's arm slid around his shoulders friendly-like. "No problem!"

"Anything else?" The bartender stomped by, asking. Alec's eyes glanced between the wavy-haired brunette and the dark-haired night model as Peta disengaged.

"We're fine, thanks Sara,"

The brunette sniffed, stomping back to the other patrons.

"Dang," Alec's eyes followed the other woman momentarily. "You sure pissed her off."

"Eh, exes," Peta shrugged. "Can't live with 'em…"

"Can't sleep with 'em," Alec nodded in agreement.

"I'm pretty sure that's not how that saying goes," Peta turned to look at him.

Alec shrugged, taking another swig from his bottle. He swiveled around the barstool, leaned back into the counter, and his eyes moved across the crowd within Crash.

"Max is probably halfway to a popsicle by now," Peta said, following his gaze, the way his eyes moved around the room, settling on women with dark hair before moving on to the next.

"What?" Alec glanced at her.

"Nothin'," Peta shrugged. The put down her glass and turned to face Alec and said in all seriousness, "You know what? Not nothing. In all seriousness, you two have been tip-toeing around it for as long as I've known you."

Alec sighed. "Tip-toeing around what?"

"Oh, come _on_, Alec."

"We're friends," Alec grunted.

"You can be honest with me you know?" Peta said after a moment, her gaze penetrating. "I mean, I know, yeah, transgenics, emotional sharing isn't really our thing, but I am like one of the only people who knows that you two are actually… I don't know… whatever it is you two are…"

Alec frowned at her. And he wondered…

How did she see them? She'd only shown up in T.C. a few months ago. She'd never seen Alec and Max… well… the way they'd been right out of Manticore. Everyone else was stuck in the 'Max and Alec barely tolerate each other' mode. Sketchy and Cindy, two of their closest friends, included. How did a relative newcomer, an outsider, view their new, still admittedly snark-charged, friendship?

Pretty favorably, he guessed, 'cuz Peta had been dropping hints on who the leader of Transgenic Nation should be with ever since she'd first seen Max and Alec in action together in the same room.

Her reaction to Logan had been even better.

Really, Peta was quite attractive when her nose wrinkled in disgust.

"I never thought that would be it, you know?" He finally sighed, figuring, hey, she's the one person who wouldn't give him crap followed by, 'but… it's _you_ guys,'.

Peta blinked.

"Uh… what?"

"First kiss," Alec glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes. "Always thought it'd be…"

"Waitaminute." Peta interrupted. "Before you go any further, let me get one thing straight… You've actually imagined a first kiss with Max?" Her face split into a wide grin.

Alec grunted in annoyance, pushing himself from the barstool, headed towards the pool tables. Peta let it go. Well. Sort of. Okay. Not at all.

"Was there mood lighting? And romantic music? And, dunno, maybe some fireworks?" Peta was smirking.

"Can it, shorty."

Her fingers closed around his arm and she pulled him back. "'Cuz those things aren't Max, Alec. And they're not you, either. Maybe one day… but to start out with? You'll either need a brick to knock some sense into her or-"

"Well, if it isn't the Hot Twins,"

Peta whipped around. And she smiled. Evilly. And glanced at Alec. "Beat it."

"Hey, you're supposed to be hanging out with me!" Alec huffed in annoyance.

Peta smirked at Cindy who was starin' back with an amused expression. "Plans change,"

Cindy looked away from the Mediterranean beauty. While she did admit to a certain amount of interest in the transgenic, she also knew about her track-record, and so was steerin' clear. For now. She fixated on Alec, instead, her eyes narrowing in mistrust. "So, what was that y'all were saying about Max?"

This time it was Alec's turn to snag an arm. He pulled Peta, protesting, away from his former co-worker and fair-weather friend. "Good to see ya, Cindy, we'll tell Max you said hey!"

"But-"

"Quiet," He glanced back at Peta as he was dragging her away, "Or I'll tell Max you put Clara's new boyfriend on your night retinue just so you could torment him and keep him away from your ex's bedroom."

"I just needed more people!" Peta protested. "He had all the skills I wanted!"

"Yeah, right, so does every other night model there is." Alec glanced down at his watch. "Speaking of which, shouldn't you be getting to work soon?"

"Yeah." Peta scowled, wrenching her arm away from the taller man. Her eyes flicked over Alec for a moment, before narrowing. "You don't mention Jay and I won't tell Max that you have girly romance fantasies about her."

"That is so not even what I said!"

Peta stomped out of the bar, barely hearing Alec's mutter behind her.

"God, I'm going to need another beer after this."

* * *

_Tbc in _Wednesday_ with more info on claim vs. matings, the reappearance of Marcy, and some Big Bads. Yay, fun. And maybe some making out. We'll see. _


	4. Wednesday

Week of the Cat

_Wednesday_

* * *

Councilman Chang had come a long way in his relatively short life. How far, nobody knew for sure, because he'd appeared on the scene only recently, a virtual unknown.

He was well-spoken, well-read, well-dressed, well-liked, well-funded… He was well-everything. Even handsome, if in an unconventional way, of an indeterminate age, with coal dark eyes, black hair, exotic features; a mutt mixture of Chinese and who knows what else. It seemed impossible not to like him and his promises of change, his promises to bring Seattle back to the way it used to be, before transgenics, before the current economic slump, before everything that had ever gone wrong in the common man's life. Which isn't why Matt Sung, and then Logan, working for Detective Sung, had been immediately suspicious. No, what bothered them was, charismatic or no, how could a virtual unknown rise to the top so quickly, without a little bit of something greasing the wheels?

Well, the grease, in this case, was the slick sound of dirty money, doled out by almost every arms dealing, flesh peddling, mob affiliated scumbag in this town. Something Chang didn't always particularly like to dwell on. In a world of black and white, Chang counted himself as a pleasing shade of grey. Sure, his meteoric rise might not have been possible without the help of some of Seattle's darker element. Sure, in return, he put up with, and distracted from, some underhanded dealings; some gun selling and some prostitution, and a little bit of racketeering… but some of that extra money made its way to the charities he headed, to his infant son's nursery, to his church, of which he never missed a Sunday service. So, really, he wasn't all bad.

Which is just another reason why he wasn't going to sit by and let all his hard work fall down around his ears. His fingers were hard on the head of security's shoulder. The man shifted uncomfortably. "So, what, exactly, are we looking at?" Chang asked, a little too calm, all things considered.

"Security cameras," The head of security, Frank, was starting to sweat, trying to surreptitiously wiggle out from underneath a tight grip. He was no slouch but something about his employer always put him one edge. But hey, it was hard getting work in today's economy, his MBA didn't go very far, and he had a wife, three kids, and a mortgage payment to think of. This was better than nothing.

He managed to pull away from under his employer's hand, reached for the mouse on his desk. Clicked on a few folders, opening up the security recording from the previous morning.

Security cameras within the mansion were strictly prohibited. Anything that could make it into the hands of Seattle's overzealous D.A., or frustratingly unbuyable detectives' offices, was not worth it. For protection, round the clock security was good enough. Last thing Jimmy Chang needed was a maid with a grudge and a security feed with a slimeball.

Outside the mansion, now that was a different story. Gangsters had a wonderful habit of using unmarked cars, which meant the grounds of Chang's estate could be monitored 24-7, so long as no camera pointed to closely at the front entrance.

It was dark in the video, early morning, still on night recording, casting everything in an eerie, neon green glow. The bag was the first thing over, a small, dark green lump, arching over the wall and landing in the wet grass below. Then came two forms, pulling themselves effortlessly over a wall that was easily ten feet tall. They paused only a moment at the crest, and then dark bodies were alert as they hit the grass, one of them grabbed the bag, and they took off running immediately, straight towards the mansion.

"What the hell do I pay you for? Where was security when someone decided to break in?" Chang demanded in cold anger, his signature calm still in place.

It would have cost him his job to say that he'd been noticing a disturbing trend during the week, when Chang was in the city. Some of the guards would just take off for a few hours. Shoot, anyone looking at the place at the wrong time might think Chang only had security on the weekends. But that wasn't _his_ fault; it was just so hard to find good help these days. "Checking a disturbance on the other side of the fence," Frank lied smoothly, instead.

"Did they get inside?"

"Must have. They don't show back up for another hour." He scrolled forward on the recording, showing two figures in dark clothes, early morning light against their bodies, go back out the same way they'd come in. "Bag didn't look any different, so I don't think they took anything," He pointed out helpfully.

"Which means they must have _left_ something." Chang's face was grim. That damn D.A., and his little bloodhound Sung, were starting to get on his nerves. "They're probably working with the police,"

He pushed away from the desk, expensive shoes squeaking on cheap linoleum as he paced for a moment. Finally, he turned back to his head of security, eyes hard. "I want a sweep of the whole house. Every nook, every cranny. Nobody says a word until we're sure the place isn't bugged."

"What if we do find something?" Frank swiveled in his chair to look at his boss.

"Let me know. If we destroy them, the police will know we found them." Chang's dark eyes went distant, his mind working quickly, rapidly, churning out possible scenarios, solutions. "If it is the police, we might have to move the entire operation." His eyes refocused. "Work on the tape. Get as close in as you can. I'll have some of my people on the inside cross reference their faces with the police payroll. If it's not the police, after all… well, we'll just have to take care of them ourselves."

* * *

"And then, I say, Carly, I can't even _feel_ anything below my waist, how the hell am I supposed to-"

"Carter," Max turned and interrupted the X-4's conversation with her Second.

"Yeah, Max?" He turned blue eyes on their Commander Extraordinaire.

"Will you _please_ shut up?" She demanded, still stirring her coffee. Let him think she was bein' bitchy, she just couldn't handle it right now. The last thing either she or Alec needed at this point was to be reminded how ridiculously fantastic sex was supposed to be so soon after a claiming. She'd spent almost an hour in the shower last night; it was a wonder she wasn't frostbitten.

Carter shrugged, not really put off. "Sure thing, Max."

Max turned brown eyes on her Second next, and he met her gaze unflinching. Her face colored a bit, but her voice was very calm. "And _you_, don't you have something to do… you know…" She gestured in emphasis with her free hand, "somewhere that's not here?"

Carter's eyes narrowed in speculation as he glanced back and forth between Max and Alec, the electric current popping between their eyes. Lots of rumors had started swirling in the last couple of days. At 26, the fair-skinned, dark-haired X-4 counted himself as too old to listen to gossip… But c'mon… Who wasn't interested in the soap opera that was their Commander in Chief's life?

"Somewhere to be?" Alec asked, still oozing a loose, liquid kind of relaxation. "Not really," And he shrugged, broad shoulders rising and falling slowly in what Max thought was an entirely too fascinating sort of way, especially since he was still wearing the same clothes as yesterday. The tight black tee made something in her brain shut off. Max was only vaguely aware that Alec was still talking. "It's been really quiet this week. No White problems, no influx of rednecks tryin' to get themselves a trannie. No nothin'."

"Well," She shook herself out of her stare and her eyes darted towards Carter, watching them both. She crafted her words carefully. "I thought we agreed it'd be a good idea for us to separate this week… you know… spread out the chain of command a bit."

Smoooth, Max. Real smooth.

"Did we?" Alec asked conversationally, something gleaming in his eye. Something that, oddly enough, looked a little bit like annoyance, a little like payback. Payback for what, Max wasn't sure. "Totally forgot. My bad, Max." And he didn't move a muscle, just kept lounging there on grey cushions.

"Well?" She demanded, and she'd have waved her hand in annoyance if it wouldn't have made her coffee slosh out of her Styrofoam cup.

"Hey," He pointed out, stifling a yawn. "We were here first,"

How unfair. How could he just sit there like he wasn't half as affected by this thing as she was? She hadn't meant to slowly make her way over to the corner of command, to the trio of gray couches thrown around an old beat-up coffee table, near the counter that held the coffeepot. Well… no… she had meant to come over here, because, really, coffee was the lifesblood of Command, so when _he'd_ seen _her_ coming, _he_ should have booked it, not just lounged there like he didn't even realize she was there.

Besides, it was only six o'clock. He'd sleep 'till noon if she'd let him. What was he even doing up this early?

Actually, he hadn't gone to sleep. He'd hung out at Crash long after Peta had left him, downing cheap beer well into the night. Sucks that he couldn't get drunk on cheap .06 percent liquor and take something young and warm and willing home. And even after a long night of drinking and slightly lower inhibitions, the only bad idea that'd run across his mind was to go back to Max's place and finishing what they kept trying to start. He'd finally gone home sober, frustrated, annoyed. Even more annoyed when he'd climbed into bed, only to stare at the ceiling for a few hours, sleep refusing to come as he thought of warm skin and soft lips and hard gasps.

So, once again, he was tired. And grumpy.

This was all her fault.

He turned back to Carter, pretending to ignore Max. "Why'd you claim Carly, anyway? Why didn't you guys just go for the whole 'Mate' thing from the get go?"

Max lounged back into the countertop, curious despite the knowledge that the more space 'tween her n' Alec, the better, and she had paperwork, and oh well, she'd just listen real quick to the guard commander.

"Man, some younger X-5 was pissing her off. Wouldn't take her 'no, I'm in a relationship' as an answer." Carter shrugged. "But she wasn't really ready for 'marriage' either, which is kinda what Mating is, y'know; the whole permanent shebang."

"So, you claimed her to get him off her back," Max interrupted dryly, moving to the couch and sinking onto the armrest next to Alec. Alec's eyes darted towards her. And he scooted a bit closer to Carter. Max scowled.

"Hey," Carter hid a smile. "She asked. It's like a quick fix, easy to break; she didn't have to worry 'bout any little punk kids trying to catch her eye." He paused, thinking, before finally adding, "It was kind of like my stamp, hey, we're not married, but this is temporarily my turf, so back off."

"How long did the crazy good sex last for?" Alec asked blandly. Carter was lookin' at him in something that wasn't suspicion but that wasn't totally 'hey, I'm a big fuckin' moron,' either.

"Man, we've always had crazy good sex, why do you think I keep her around?" Carter's smile was wicked, his eyes crinkling in delight. "Nothin' quite like trannie stamina," If they kept askin', Carter would know something was up for sure. He wondered how much Mole knew about the situation. It was Carter's dream to one day beat the lizard man at his own game; information mongering. Not gossiping, 'cuz he was too old for gossiping; he was strictly interested in the mongering aspect. So far, he wasn't even comin' close to Mole's level of monger.

"Sure, transgenic stamina, whoopdidoo," Max shrugged, looking down, her nails pressing little half-moons into the rim of her cup. "But how long did it take 'til all the weird aggressiveness went away?"

"Well, Carly and I are equals," Carter shifted in discomfort. No transgenic really liked talking about the weird animal hierarchy; the instinct and the knowing that they didn't really like but couldn't really fight. "So my claim never settled down, like it could tell that I didn't have enough status on her, especially with her being a female. So it stayed all weird until I finally convinced her that she was the only one for me and she claimed me back; made it a full-fledged mating."

Max and Alec shared a disgruntled glance.

"Is there something you guys want to tell me?" Carter demanded.

"My shift's over!" Peta declared, sauntering into Command. She caught sight of Alec and Max over in the couch corner, of Carter, looking at them in suspicion. Ugh. Peta saves the day again, she thought to herself in annoyance.

Alec grunted as one hundred and twenty pounds of Peta dropped into his lap. "Heya hot stuff, when are we hookin' up for that threesome?" Peta waggled her eyebrows, her arms hooking around his neck.

Carter kept one eye on Max. It was to Max's extreme credit that she didn't even twitch. Her teeth did clamp around the inside of her cheek, but unless the X-4's had been gifted with X-ray vision, there's no way her day guard commander would be able to tell that.

Peta leaned backwards, thick wavy tresses falling into Carter's lap as she looked upside-down at him in mock sympathy, "I'd invite you, but you got the ole' ball n' chain waiting on you,"

The tall X-4 snorted, standing up. "If you're off duty, I guess that means I'm on. I'll catch you guys later,"

"Man," Peta shook her head, slouching off of Alec's lap, squishing herself into the chilly air space between Max and Alec. "Every time I see him, I expect him to break out in with a brogue, him with his whole dark Irish look goin' on."

Max was strangely silent. Alec looked kind of moody.

"Okay, who woke up on the wrong side of somebody else's bed?" Peta scowled.

Max finally stood, releasing the inside of her cheek, the metallic tang of blood filling her mouth, and stomped off to the back. Alec scowled after her for a few moments before finally standing and following her.

"Was it something I said?" Peta asked in confusion.

"What's wrong with you?" Alec demanded, shutting her office door behind her.

"Me?" Max demanded, whirling on him. "What's wrong with you? Could you have made it any less obvious that you were trying to ignore me?"

"Are you kidding me?" Alec exploded. "I thought the plan was avoidance!"

Max conveniently forgot that she'd been trying to hint just that less than five minutes ago. "We can't avoid each other, we work together," She pointed out.

"Are you kidding me?" He repeated. "It was your fucking plan!"

"No it wasn't," She frowned in confusion, "It was yours."

"And it was a good plan!" Alec corrected immediately.

Max rolled her eyes. "I just wanted some coffee, Alec. My world doesn't exactly revolve around you,"

Alec's scowl deepened.

"Okay, did I miss something?" She demanded, waving a hand in annoyance. Cooling coffee sloshed across her hand, dripped down to the floor, and it just made her annoyed. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

He stared at her for a hard moment before grudgingly admitted. "Couldn't sleep,"

Max frowned, 'cuz how was that her fault? "Well, fine, go sleep. And don't come back until you're in a better mood."

"Maybe you should take your own advice, Ms. Grumpy McGrump Pants," Alec muttered.

"What are you, five? Did you really just say that?" Why was he tryin' so damn hard to pick a fight with her? If she wasn't so damn annoyed, she might have laughed in his face. Then again, why was she tryin' so hard to keep the fight going? Ugh, maybe this was part of the aggressiveness Peta had warned her about.

"'Course, in your case, all that tension might not be because of sleepiness." Alec said musingly, wondering why he was tryin' so hard to be a pain in the ass. Maybe 'cuz she'd ignored him in favor of coffee. Maybe 'cuz he was tired and he'd spent all night thinking about her. Or maybe all those rumors were true; maybe unstable claims really did cause aggressiveness.

"And what is that supposed to mean?" Max's face twisted.

"It means, maybe you need to work out a few kinks, Maxie," His face twisted into a lascivious grin.

Okay, now Max knew for sure. He was totally tryin' to piss her off. "_Excuse_ you?"

"How long's it been since you n' Logan had some quality time?" Alec was grinning now, advancing on her, his expression evil 'cuz really, he already knew the answer.

Her face colored as she backed away. "Are you forgetting about something? A virus, perhaps?"

"Maaax," Alec shook his head, his advance not even faltering, "Believe me, even without skin to skin contact, if it were me, I'd find a way to-"

"Okay, we are not talking about this," Max whirled, stomping back to her desk, tossing her untouched coffee in the trash. She didn't even like coffee in the mornings, she was a night drinker. Why'd she gotten it in the first place?

"Why can't we talk about it?" Alec leaned over the desk, knuckles hard on the worn oak. "He's your boyfriend. I'm one of your friends. You shouldn't be ashamed to talk to me about-"

"I am _not_ talking about this!" She repeated as she threw herself in her chair. Her mind couldn't even wrap around the image of doing anything _remotely_ sexual with Logan.

Which, really, in Alec's opinion, shoulda clued her in to the defunct nature of their relationship, but still.

"I'm just saying," He shrugged, a small little smile tugging at his lips as he straightened.

"Well, _don't._"

The stared hard at each other for a long moment over the desktop and piles of papers and responsibilities.

"Max-"

"Max, you got a minute?" It was Jeri's brown head, peeking around the door. She paused to smile warmly at Alec, who backed away from Max's desk, and leaned back into his heels, lookin' a bit disgruntled.

"Yeah sure," Max stood, circling the desk, pausing near Alec to scowl, "We'll talk about this later,"

"Can't wait," He said blandly, knowing full well that Max's idea of talking was code for Max was gonna bitch him out for bringing up Logan and her sexual frustration. Guess he'd go home and grab some Zzz's after all. If he had to contend with her tongue, he'd like some sleep to go with it.

And why the hell had he just been stupid enough to think about her tongue?

* * *

"Three in the sitting room on the second floor," The guard murmured to him. "Even more in your personal office."

Jimmy Chang turned back to his head of security. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't fire you."

Frank shifted in his seat, nervously, turning back to the computer. "I blew up the images," He clicked on a folder, pulled up an enhanced, green photo, and hoped his employer couldn't tell he was grasping at straws, couldn't see the slight sheen of sweat collecting on his top lip.

"I'll send it to my people inside-" Chang was muttering, losing interest in the man's fear, but the guard at his back had leaned around his shoulder, straining to look at the computer monitor.

"Hey, I know that girl!"

Chang froze. "What was that?" He whirled on the man in rage.

The guard took a slight step back, despite his much greater size. "She's on the news all the time," He defended. "She's one of those transgenics that that Eyes Only character is always defending."

"Boss, you don't think she's working for Eyes Only do you?" Frank swiveled back to him and frowned. "He's always tipping people off to the police. What was it, a year ago that one of his hacks scared one of the Sperrenchino boys into flipping and fingering their boss?"

"And Matt Sung swooped in and slapped on the cuffs," The guard shook his head, like it was a cryin' shame.

"The more I hear about this guy, the less I like," Chang scowled, obsidian eyes glinting in fluorescent lighting.

"What are you gonna do?" The big ape under his employ asked.

"We?" Chang questioned, because if he went down, everyone under him would go down too. "_We_ are going back to my office, and we are having a long conversation about my shipment coming in tomorrow night."

"What shipment?" The guard asked in confusion.

Chang sighed in annoyance, turning back to his head of security. "On second thought, Frank, you're with me. Send Einstein here back to his rounds."

Frank rolled his eyes, pushing away from his desk, relaxing slightly. At least his boss finally saw what he had to put up with everyday. And hopefully appreciated him that much more. "C'mon Einstein, let's go,"

"My name's Mark," The guard protested loudly, being herded away.

Ugh. All those college loans and this is what he'd been reduced to. A glorified babysitter.

* * *

The small exam room was silent as Jericho placed the vial of blood onto the tray. Might have been the low lighting that kept them quiet, the atmosphere that remained grungy despite their best efforts to clean everything up and sterilize the place. In these abandoned doctors' offices everything was second-hand, nothing was brand new. Sometimes, she missed all the shininess, the order, the purpose, of Manticore. She peeled off the latex gloves, throwin' them onto the dental assistant tray (hey, you use what you gotta use) and she could hear Max fidgeting on the exam table behind her, but she couldn't force herself to move any faster.

All that training as a medic, and this is what she'd been reduced to, Jeri sighed, a glorified lab tech. There wasn't any battles or wounded to deal with… maybe once in a while, but not really enough to keep her busy on a regular basis. This was the highlight of her week, spending time drawing blood, lookin' under a microscope. It killed a few hours of time, checking to make sure that their leader's virus hadn't decided to start mutating into an anti-Max and/or anti-humanity agent as well. Which is why she did it personally. It wasn't that she didn't trust the other people volunteering as stand-by medics. She was just that damn bored.

The brunette stifled another sigh, wondering where all the excitement in her life had gone.

"Want a band-aid?" Jericho swiveled back to Max, waving a neon pink bandage. Max's look was answer enough as she shoved her sleeve back down, over the pinprick at the crook of her elbow.

This was usually the point the Max slipped away, back to Command, while Jeri spent a few riveting hours with a microscope, until she was positive that the virus wasn't trying to mutate. Not that she was entirely sure what she would do if it ever did. She kind of wished that one of those narcissistic Perfect Donor pig heads would wander their way into T.C., to see if all that perfect blood, chock full of stem cells and souped up T-Cells, would have any effect on Max's virus.

Jeri blinked when she realized Max was still sitting there, waiting. "Umm. What's… up?" Mindless conversation had never been her strong point, she was a get-in get-the-hell-out kind of girl. She added, a little bit hopefully, "I gave the last of my candy to the last batch of X-6's that came in for check-ups, so if you're waiting for-"

"Jeri, can I ask you something?" Max fidgeted on the old exam table, suddenly nervous.

"Shoot," Jeri shrugged, rolling backwards, leaning into the hard metal back of her chair. It squeaked in protest and she winced, but not because of the high-pitched squeal of grinding metal. She hoped Max wasn't going to ask about Heat again. Last thing they needed was for that bastard to creep back into their lives before her staff figured out how to make the suppressant boosters that Manticore had used to pump 'em up with. She'd told Max she was workin' on it as fast as she could, but their stations were still woefully low-tech and-

"What do you know about claims?"

"Anecdotal evidence, only," Jeri smiled in obvious relief, brushing a short lock of chestnut hair behind an ear. Her voice gained strength as her confidence grew, "It's a fairly new phenomenon. You can bet your life that no one in Manticore was trying to put their teeth into anybody else. The scientists would have had a field day with that one, ripping us apart to find the mechanism responsible for a Claim."

Max remained quiet for a long moment, long enough that Jeri turned back to her tray, finally tossing the pink band-aid away. Her eyes darted back in surprise when Max's soft voice filled the small exam room. "You think it might be a lost cause to try n' control it?"

Jeri frowned, turning, narrow features going pensive. And she kinda wondered, if all those rumors swirling lately… Nah, no way. She glanced sharply at Max, her eyes critically scanning every inch of visible skin… which wasn't much. Max always seemed terribly covered up. Didn't she ever get hot in all those heavy black clothes, those unnecessary black gloves? Then again, if Jeri had a virus that could kill somebody, she might limit open-air skin, too.

"It's not me," Max huffed when Jeri had been staring too long. "So you can stop checking for teeth marks."

Jeri started in guilt, warm brown eyes coming back up, kinda sheepish. "So… it's a strictly hypothetical question then?" She asked.

Max nodded slowly. "Strictly hypothetical…" Her eyes darted away, "For a friend."

Jeri's eye twitched. She was so checking Alec for bite marks next time she saw him. "Try n' control, what, Max? The great sex?" She asked with perfect blandness. What? She couldn't be short, professional, and boring all the time. She was an Alpha; being a snark was part of her charm. And her superiority complex.

"Let's say…" Max shifted in discomfort, hardly noticing, "That someone claimed someone else… like Carter claimed his girlfriend, just to get someone off their backs. And they didn't necessarily want the side benefits,"

"Why wouldn't they want the side benefits?" Jeri asked in confusion. "Are they prudish and slightly retarded?"

Max scowled. "Be serious."

Keeping the smile internal was almost physically painful, but somehow she managed. "I don't know… shouldn't be too hard, so long as you stay away from him." Max started and Jeri wondered at her ability to keep her voice free from mirth. "And by you and him, I mean your hypothetical friend should stay away from their hypothetical claim."

"Stay away from him," Max muttered, giving up, because the glee was fixin' to burst out of Jeri's eyes and they both knew where this was goin' on anyway. "But I see him everywhere,"

Jeri kept rolling with it though, a smile leaking through. "Tell your friend that so long as he stays within carefully constructed boundaries, there shouldn't be a problem,"

"What do you mean?" Max's eyes swung up to the medic.

Jeri sighed, becoming serious once more. "Max, have you ever heard of desensitization?"

"No," Max scowled.

"It's kind of like a psychology term. People get over their phobias by repeatedly being exposed to the thing that scares them."

"I'm not scared of anything," Max shugged.

"It works in other ways, too. Military training, for example," She continued conversationally, "And in little kids. The more violence you see, the less it bothers you, until it becomes more of a norm."

Max was starting to catch on. "What, exactly, are you trying to imply?"

Jeri shook her head, leaning forward, "The more often you n' Alec push past that boundary, the more normal it's going to seem. And each time you go past it, you're going to go a little bit farther, until one day, you will end up in his bed."

Max's eyes widened, not even wanting to know how Jeri had immediately guessed that it was Alec. "That is _not_ going to happen."

She shrugged. "Unless you keep within clearly established boundaries, who's telling what might happen here in the next couple of weeks," She frowned, watching Max's wide, scared eyes. She almost felt kind of bad for her leader. "Max, there is an easier way, you know." She added sympathetically. "Just revoke the claim. And your Ordinary will never have to know,"

"This isn't about Logan," Max muttered. "This is about me. And bein' scared of what I might do," Of all the bridges she could burn with one act; the relationships she could destroy.

"So revoke it," Jeri's eyes brown eyes were solemn, thin lips pressing together. "Give Alec back to Marcy and Janna."

Max shot off her stool, suddenly pacing, her hands clenching, obviously distressed. Jeri leaned back into her chair, shakin' her head, because she'd known what an emotional firestorm a statement like that could pull out of the newly claimed, but someone had to be honest to the woman. "God, I can't believe he was even stupid enough to get mixed up with them in the first place," Max was fairly snarling in unhappiness.

"It was going to happen eventually, Max," Jeri shook her head. "There's only so many single Alpha males left, they're getting snatched up left and right. If it wasn't Marcy and Janna, it would have been two other females eventually."

"You mean I could release him back into the wild, only to have this very same thing happen again?" Max stopped her pacing, turning to scowl at the woman. Jeri shrugged apologetically.

"Unless he ever settles down and chooses one woman? Yeah. Pretty much."

"I hate him," Max muttered, glancing away.

"Obviously you don't, or you wouldn't have helped him out in the first place," Jeri replied blandly, looking around for her clipboard, hoping there might be more appointments after this. Too bad most of the babies were done popping out by now.

Max stared at her for a long moment, face twisting. Finally, she stood and she grunted. "You ever feel like you're at a game, stuck on the wrong side of the field, and everyone's chanting for the wrong team to win?"

"Ya kinda lost me, Max," Jeri looked back at her commander, blinking.

Although, if she was talking about Alec versus Logan, and Max had suddenly found herself surrounded by people cheerin' for Alec...

"How do you know we're cheerin' for the wrong team, Max?" Jeri asked, tongue in cheek. "If you're the one moving against the crowd, what makes you right, and everyone else wrong?"

Max stared at her for a long moment, her brown eyes blank. "You're not a psychologist, you're a medic."

"I can be both," Jeri sniffed, "Ain't no one to tell me otherwise."

* * *

Alec was long gone by the time Max had crossed the two streets, headed back to Command from the grey office building of Med Station One. She thought she saw Brock's annoying mug for a moment, but he was gone before she even got a good scowl working. She shoved open the heavy doors of the former warehouse, and paused, her body tensing. The air was alive with an electric current and she was glancing around in confusion, looking for Alec. But this wasn't something warm and hot and _Alec_, this was an air of a pack of dogs with their tails between their legs, waiting for things to get ugly.

"What's goin' on?" She demanded.

"Why does everyone assume I always know what's going on?" Mole shrugged when she sidled up to him. She fixed him with a look and reptilian features broke into a slow, knowing, secretive grin. "Nothin' major. Clara and Peta are in the back. Cat fight."

Max sighed. Great. 'Parently all those dogs were just gossip hounds, waitin' for the newest tidbit. "Which one is Clara, again?"

"The baby mama, not the bartender." Mole reminded.

"Right," Max rolled her eyes, stomping off, yanking open the hallway door.

Their raised voices were easily distinguishable the closer she got to the bathroom door, until she was finally before it, her hand on the doorframe. She paused for a moment, asked herself if this was really part of being a Commander, before she steeled herself and shoved open the heavy, blue door.

"I know you said something to him, why else would he be-"

"Hey girls," Max smiled blandly, leaning into the blue tile next to the sink. "What's goin' on?"

The two women paused in their argument, turning to look at her. Max's eyes swept across them. So this was Clara. Not what she'd been expecting. Sara, Max knew, while not well enough to keep her name straight, at least on an acquaintance kind of basis, seein' as how the girl had worked at Crash since the release at Manticore, long before Max had realized the woman was a transgenic. Sara was tall with wavy brown hair and a swaying walk and a complete disinterest in men. And while Sara, with her strong, oval features and warm smile and smattering of freckles wasn't drop-dead gorgeous, she exuded a kind of tall, warm sex appeal that seemed to make up for it… or so Peta and Alec insisted. But Clara…

Clara was just downright cute. At 5'3", the blonde couldn't be called statuesque or sexy or anything like that... She was like the All-American Girl with her short little bob, and pink cheeks, and upturned nose and… this is what Peta was crazy about? Compared to some of Manticore's more exotic creations… Clara almost seemed a little… white-bread and boring. She didn't even look like she knew what a gun was, much less how to use it… which might make her all the more dangerous, Max realized with a start.

"Hey, Max," Peta was frowning at her. "We're kind of in the middle of something here."

"I know," Max replied blandly, relaxing into the wall. "So does the rest of the Command. The shouting kind of gave it away. You wanna tell me what's going on?"

Shorty had some steel in her, though. "It's personal," Clara said grudgingly, lookin' away.

Max straightened, her eyebrows rising into her hairline. "I'm sorry," She said, her sweet voice rapidly making way for something hard. "You seem to think I was makin' a request. I'm not asking, I'm _telling_ you. What is going on?"

Clara and Peta had two options at this point. They could book it, or they could be forced to give in to the commanding edge in Max's voice.

Transgenics, never doin' things the easy way.

"Stop goading him," Clara said warningly to Peta and booked. Max watched the blonde escape in almost a kind of amusement. Her eyes went back to Peta's, still lookin' at the door falling slowly shut.

"Stop goading who?" Max asked blandly.

Peta's olive eyes were distant, her customary snark gone. "No one," She muttered, glanced away.

Max sighed in annoyance, pressing a hand to her eyes. "You put her breeding partner on your detail, didn't you?"

Peta's eyes snapped back to Max. "Maybe." She hedged.

"Peta-" Max sighed again.

"Max, you put me in charge of night watch." Peta frowned, suddenly all business. "I think I get some say in which volunteers I accept,"

Max grunted. Ugh. She had, hadn't she? Sometimes Max wished she could stretch herself thin enough to do everything herself. She had a feeling she'd be happier in the long run. "Fine," She finally scowled. "Just… don't… goad him, or whatever it is you do that pissed your ex off so bad,"

"Please," Peta sniffed, turning to the mirror, leaning over the sink, staring hard at her reflection. Her voice was teasing, but her smirk was so fake, Max was tempted to drop a brick on her foot, to see if it'd affect her. "Drop a few hints and men start getting all defensive. It's not my fault he never considered that she might bat for two teams," Her eyes darted towards Max.

"Uh-huh." Max's arms folded across her chest.

"What?"

Max rolled her eyes. "My kingdom for a transgenic that can be honest."

"Like you're one to talk," Peta muttered.

Max's face twisted, and she straightened, letting her arms drop. "Okay, you're kind of spun right now, so I'm gonna let that one go. God," Max huffed turning on her heel. "Why is everyone tryin' to piss me off today?" She shoved out of the bathroom.

"Maybe because it's so easy!" Peta called after her, at the same time as Alec, leaning outside the door was saying, "Maybe because it's so easy."

"Alec?" Max paused, because… she hadn't felt him, so- "What are you doing here, I thought-"

"Just got back. I got all the way home, got undressed, and just stared at my ceiling for a half an hour." Alec shrugged, pushing himself off the wall. "Apparently sleeping is not on the agenda for today."

"And you thought comin' back to Command so I could chew you out would be so much more fun?" She asked, her face deepening into a frown as they turned as moved as one towards her office. Oh well, at least he'd changed. She didn't have to look at that damn form-fitting black tee anymore… even though the soft blue cotton was almost as bad.

"It was a valid point and you know it," He shrugged, broad shoulders moving under faded material, not that she was lookin', as she pushed open the door.

"What was?" What had they been talkin' about again?

Alec blinked. "You n' Logan, space cadet, and the fact that you could get busy in some unorthodox ways if you really wanted too,"

Max's face twisted in disgust.

"Should you really be makin' the 'eww' face when we're talking about your boyfriend?" Alec asked blandly. His face twisted into a smirk. "Or have you broken up with him yet?"

"We haven't broken up." Max ground out. "We're not going to break up. Just because it's been a little tense lately-"

She could see Alec's concentration waning rapidly as he started glancing around. Guess Logan and her love life just didn't interest him. She scowled. Some friend.

Really, it was just a conversation they'd had so many times, Alec didn't feel like running through his rehearsed lines. Max was in the denial stage of the break-up, sayin' she wasn't going to go through with it, when they both knew she was shutting down. The justification for the break-up would be next, if only thrown around in the hypothetical.

"Yeah, whatever," His wandering eyes fell on her couch and brightened, as he wondered if it was nap-worthy.

"Gee, Alec, am I boring you?" She asked darkly as he headed towards her couch, having apparently decided it suited his needs.

He sank into the cushy material with a happy grunt. "By no means." He waved her on, "Continue, and every time you pause to take a breath, just pretend like I say 'uh-huh', 'yeah, sure,' or 'whatever you say, Max,'"

"Okay, so things are kind of tense with me n' Logan lately." Max admitted with a shake her head, going back to her desk, sitting in the chair, wincing as it squeaked.

"Uh-huh," Alec nodded, flopping to his back.

"But I only see him once a week, unless we got some Eyes Only thing goin' on." Max sighed, leaning back into her chair, staring hard at the ceiling. "And there's still the virus to think of." She started swiveling, slowly, back n' forth, almost absentmindedly. "I mean, can I really put him at risk, just 'cuz I'm selfishly thinkin' of myself?"

If there was a selfish person in that relationship, Alec wasn't entirely sure it was Max. "Yeah, sure," He shrugged and rolled to his side, his eyes falling shut.

"Yeah, sure, I can put him at risk 'cuz I'm selfishly thinking of myself?" She demanded, her slow swivel stopping abruptly as she sat up in her chair, narrowed eyes swinging back to him. "I mean, I get that you don't exactly approve of my decision to be with Logan, but that's kinda harsh."

"Whatever you say, Max." Alec breathed, burrowing into cushions.

A balled up memo hit him directly in the face. "Hey!" He protested, sitting back up.

"Will you please pay attention to me?" She scowled.

"I am paying attention," He defended, swinging his legs back off the couch, leaning forward over his knees in annoyance. "It's the exact same as the other three times you've broken up with him in the last six months. You want me to tell you how the rest of the conversation will go?" He started ticking off on his fingers, like she was predictable or something, whatever, "You'll ignore everything I say, you'll talk yourself into breaking up with him without my help, and a week from now, Logan will get himself shot at, or caught by White, or you'll bond over some fish girl or something, and it'll be back to life as usual, big mooning calf eyes and everything."

Max stared at him for a long moment. "Sometimes I really hate you," She finally said.

It shouldn't have hurt her feelings, but it kinda did. "Yeah, well, feeling's mutual, sister." He rolled his eyes, pushin' himself from her couch.

"Where are _you_ going?"

"Somewhere where all the denial won't keep me awake," He scowled, pushing out of her office. Telling himself he wasn't jealous.

"You're not going to be able to sleep anyway," She called after him, as a form of payback. And then wondered how she knew that.

Mole frowned at Alec's scowling form, stalking through Command. "What's up, princess?"

"Hit me," Alec grunted in frustration. "Hard as you can."

"Queen Bee givin' you a headache again?" Mole asked in mock sympathy.

"If I have to listen to her whining about that stupid Ordinary-" Mole's eyes widened and he was makin' cutting motions across his neck, but Alec didn't pay much attention, "one more time, I think I might kill myself. How the hell is it my business if she wants to break up with him?"

"Hey, Alec." Logan said blandly.

"Jesus!" Alec whirled, ignoring Mole's snorted, "Hardly," in favor of staring wide-eyed at the Ordinary. "Logan, when'd you get here?"

"About five minutes ago," He said blandly, eyes hard behind thin glasses.

Alec's smile fixed into something sickly and pained. "By 'stupid Ordinary' I really meant-"

"Whatever, Alec," Logan scowled, whirling away.

"Come on, Loge, I'm just tired and grumpy! Don't trust anything I say!" He called after the man as he stomped away. He turned back to Mole's amused eyes and scowled. "You could've warned me he was here."

"And pass up a chance to watch you make an ass of yourself?" Mole asked blandly. "Heaven forbid."

* * *

The door opened gently, that's how she knew it wasn't Alec. That and she didn't get the feeling like she was chewing ice, sticking a fork in an electric socket, and tumbling into a ravine, all at the same time. Still, she hadn't been expecting- She glanced up and her eyes widened in surprise. "Logan, what are you doing here?"

"Came by to check on you," His voice was bland, but his face was hard, his eyes dark. Jeez. What's his beef?

Max sighed, leaning back into her chair. "Logan, we agreed that with the toxins and everything, once a week-"

"We didn't agree," Logan shook his head in annoyance, stepping into the office and closing the door gently behind him. "You decided and wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise."

Max sighed. Again. She wasn't fixing to argue about this again. She was the leader of T.C.; it'd be nice if Logan fell in line as easily as everyone else around here. Well, as easily as most people around here. Actually, he kind of fit right in with the rest of the staff, doing things their own way until she pulled out that Alpha edge… Too bad she couldn't lord that over him. But he was her boyfriend, sort of, even if he never used the term, and she tried not to use the term in public if she could help it… So should she really want him to fall in line like a good little soldier? Shouldn't she want a partnership of equals?

Actually, she'd settle for a little bit of respect and understanding, considering the fact that she'd banned him from T.C. for his own health.

Her eyes were distant, like she hardly saw him at all. Logan looked for warmth in her, and couldn't find any. When she finally refocused on him, she seemed a little tired, a little drained... a little annoyed. Maybe what he'd heard Alec saying… "Hey you," He smiled softly, gentling his expression.

Her eyes darted away. "What's up?" She scooted forward, leaned over some paperwork, started scanning all the info. Logan frowned at the obvious tune-out.

"Been kind of busy lately," He circled the desk, lessening the distance between them, and leaned at her side, keeping his pose warm and relaxed, pretending he didn't notice how she controlled the reaction to flinch away. Virus, and all that, he told himself.

"Running a city kind of does that to a girl," Max shrugged, still focused on the papers in hand.

"That makes it official, then," Logan smiled slowly. Max froze.

"What are you talking about?" Papers were lowered slowly back to her desk. Was he going to break up with her? For a split second a sort of relief started to well, only because she didn't want to put him at risk, and then Logan opened his mouth and a dark seed of guilt was planted instead.

"We need a date night," Logan declared, his smile soft and entreating. "Something quiet and romantic and just us."

Max sighed. With all the Alec drama goin' on right now, this is so not what she needed. "Logan-"

"It'll be great," Logan smiled, talking over her, pretending he couldn't hear the protest in her voice. "I'll cook, I'll break out some wine. It'll do you good to get out of T.C., have some time to yourself for a change." Have some time away from Alec.

Max smiled a bit at the thought of a night of nothing but a chance to relax and eat good food, a night away from Alec. Then started in guilt. She couldn't just traipse past the barrier for a_ date, _not when she was busy being a responsible leader. "I'm really busy, Logan, I can't just-"

"It's a slow week," Logan pointed out. "It won't hurt anything. Besides, Max, even leaders deserve some time off."

Sometimes it seemed like he always had the answer for everything, for every protest, every argument... Could he… could he somehow sense she was pulling away from him? Was this his way of pulling her back?

Max's eyes narrowed in suspicion, and even though he'd been trying to hide it, she thought she saw it so clearly. "Why you tryin' so hard to get me to come over?"

Logan frowned. It took him a moment, but finally he said in a soft kind of voice, "Relationships are about compromise, about work. I just… don't want us to kind of fade out just because we're busy."

Max released the suspicion, wilting as the seed of guilt was watered.

He told himself he wasn't being manipulative. He just couldn't very well admit he'd heard Alec say she was thinking about breaking up with him; that he needed to set her back on the right path, to make her see that relationships really were about work and he was willing to put in the time.

"Plus," he smiled softly, adding the one thing that would make her see... "There is the whole, 'I love you' thing."

Max froze, muscles tightening as the dark seed blossomed into a full bloom of pain and unhappiness. She glanced away, hiding guilty eyes from him; _made_ her voice soft and open. "When do you want me to come over?"

He was shaking his head, "Max, if you don't want to, you don't have-"

Her voice hardened, 'cuz she didn't have time for this. "When, Logan?"

He frowned, wondering why she was so defensive. "How about Friday? Seems like a good night for a date night."

"Great." She sighed, just staring at her desk.

"How's your ribs?" He asked, changing the subject to slightly more solid, more safe, ground.

Max glanced up in surprise. "They're fine."

"Want me to check them?" He straightened, turning towards her desk, but she swiveled and her knee slammed into the drawer, blocking him from opening it. The last thing she needed was for him to see that she'd made good on her internal promise and had thrown that box of surgical gloves away.

"They're fine." She repeated, firmly. "Just a little bit of bruising left, nothing major."

She'd hardly even noticed them last night when Alec had been on top of her. Her face colored and Logan totally misread her expression, or at least, the reason behind her expression.

He smiled softly. "I'm not looking for an excuse to feel you up, Max," He joked wryly. "Unless you want me to."

Alec's voice rang out in her head, _other ways to get busy_, and Max fought down the resulting nausea. "Very funny," She said weakly.

Logan smiled and in that deadpan, wry voice, "Well, I'm a funny guy. Friday, then?"

"Friday," She nodded, calming her stomach. Goin' on a date. On Friday. It'd be good for her, she told herself, break her away from all the Alec weirdness in her life. Put her back on track, maybe, remind her of why she n' Logan were together in the first place… Because they loved each other… and stuff.

"So, about Thursday," His eyes gleamed.

"I thought we said Friday?" Max leaned back into her chair, confusion coloring her voice, able to relax once more now that they weren't talking about relationships and romance.

"You're not busy tomorrow, are you?"

"I'm on call 24/7," Max frowned. "I'm always busy." She resisted the urge to add a 'duh' at the end.

He was looking down, looking away from her. "Nothing planned, though?"

Here it comes, Max thought wryly. "Not that I know of." She sighed. "Why, what's up?"

Logan's eyes gleamed, his head coming back up. He always seemed to possess a gleeful sort of vitality when discussing missions. She wished she burned about something, anything, as strongly as the way he did for putting people away, helping the little man. She wanted to protect all transgenics, and her friends, and her family, but leading T.C. was more of a grudging responsibility than anything else. She didn't know if she'd ever been gleeful about anything in her entire life… 'cept maybe when she got to pop Alec upside the head. There was some glee in that, she smirked. Definitely.

Oh my god.

Is Logan talking?

"-don't know exactly what it is. Could be drugs, weapons, maybe slave trafficking for all I know."

Max nodded, calming her wide-eyed expression back into a mask of thoughtfulness. "Mmhmm."

Her eyes flicked over him. He was pacing now, having crossed back around her desk, and was waving his hands about in an animated manner. Her eyes slid down. He wasn't wearing his robotic legs for once, he was walking on his own. But the transgenic blood in his veins from the near miss a few months ago wouldn't last much longer.

"-called Sung, but he can't even get close until we have some hard evidence. This guy is a favorite of-"

Without the transgenic blood, Logan would rapidly degenerate; he'd be back in his wheelchair, back in his alloy legs, before too long. Max frowned. When you can hear people a mile away, that constant whir that followed Logan around… it was kind of like the transgenic equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.

Shame welled for finding annoyance in his robotic legs. If it hadn't been for her, he wouldn't be partially paralyzed in the first place. If she'd grown a conscience a little bit sooner…

"He might have even been connected to those killings over on the-"

Her face twisted, Logan assumed it was because he was doing a good job of energetically illuminating Chang's depravity, but really it was because a little bit of anger had replaced the culpability. How long? How long did she have to feel bad about Logan's paralysis? When would she be able to break away from it? What did she have to do to atone herself within her own mind?

With the anger came of bit of bitterness. It wasn't _her_ fault she found his alloy legs a little annoying. Who could blame her, because, ugh, once Logan did go back to those robotic legs, all she'd hear was, hey Max, how's the whirring wonder? The robotic rambler? The human spring? The tin man, the iron giant, the legs of legend?

God, there couldn't possibly be anyone on earth as annoying as Alec.

"-question is how we'll gather enough evidence. I was thinking maybe you could take a camera with you-"

Speaking of Alec, would he care that she was having dinner with Logan on Friday? Not that she would care if he cared. Logan was her boyfriend, Alec would just have to get over it. Soon as Logan left, she was gonna rub it in his face, payback for his grumpiness this morning.

"So, if you go around through the back, maybe that way-"

Alec had been in an awfully bad mood this morning, though, and Max's expression softened. He looked tired, again. She tried to tell herself it wasn't her problem. It was his own fault, really, he shouldn't have stayed up all night doing… whatever it was he was he'd been doing… He'd gone to the bar with Peta, but Peta had left to apparently rile up Clara's ex-boyfriend, so he'd probably stayed out all night, drinkin', flirtin', ugh, she should have gone with him to keep an eye on him. He better not be tired because he'd taken someone home with him, because she'd bounce his ass so hard on the pavement that-

"So eight o'clock, then?"

Max blinked in confusion, her eyes refocusing. "Uhh…"

Logan was looking at her strangely. "I'll see you tomorrow at eight?"

Shit. AM or PM? "I dunno, Logan, I got meetings all morning," She lied, hopin' it would draw the answer from him.

Logan scowled, "Max, if you don't want to do it, just say so."

"I'll do it," She scowled right back as the guilt resurged. "I'm just sayin' it'll be a busy morning."

"Well," Logan relaxed, smiling, "If you want to relax, stop by a little early and there might be some dinner in it for you."

PM then. Great. Most of the bad crap happened during the day, which, joy of joys, left her nights free to play at being one of Seattle's vigilante protectors. "Eh, I'll probably grab something at Mess. Trust me, you do _not_ want to feed Alec. He eats like a horse," Max frowned down at her paperwork, wondering when she'd reached for her pen and started doodling little numbers. Her eyes widened and she snatched the paper from the desktop.

Logan was looking at her strangely, and she didn't think it was because he'd noticed the sheet in front of her had been peppered with fours and nines. Oh. He'd probably mentioned it was a one-man job or something.

"I always take back-up. It's just good sense." Max scowled, partially as a cover, partially because it was true. "Especially if Jimmy Chang is as evil as you make him out to be."

"Alec won't be… busy?" Logan asked grudgingly.

It was Max's turn to look at him a bit strangely. "He won't be if I tell him not to be. Why, is there a problem?"

Logan scowled, and Max was tempted to laugh at the hypocrisy. "Sometimes I get the feeling that Alec doesn't much like me."

"Alec's just playing around, Logan, he doesn't mean-"

"I heard him call me a stupid Ordinary," Logan interrupted blandly. "Excuse me for thinking he might mean it in a slightly negative way."

Max froze. "He did _what_?!"

Logan shrugged.

* * *

"Man, sometimes I just don't like that guy," Alec scowled, watching Logan sweep out of Command in a much better mood than when he'd first come in. Mole snorted but, oh great, EO's fan club had overheard him.

"What?" Dix asked, genuinely curious. "Why not? He helps us out. He's a good guy."

Alec scowled hard, and Dix withered under his glare, his already wrinkled face sagging further. Part of his annoyance was because Alec had shown, time and time again, that he respected the guy for helpin' out the little man, for working hard on the side of transgenics… But when Logan was with Max… It was like he was a different kind of person. An annoying, manipulative, unlikable person that Alec kind of wanted to punch in the face.

"Don't mind him," Mole grunted to the other transhuman. "Kitty Cat is just takin' out some sexual frustration."

Alec and Dix both turned to stare at the reptilian transhuman. He shrugged. "My bad. I meant to say aggression. Musta been…" He glanced around, and oh great, perfect timing, look who'd just walked in and was headin' towards the coffee. "Jeri! What do you call it when you accidentally say something true instead of what you really meant to say?"

"Freudian slip!" Jeri called back, amused. "Why? Who's talking about sex?"

"Freudian slip," Mole nodded. "That's it. I meant to say aggression. Alec is just taking out some aggression."

"Shuddup, ya scaly bastard," Alec scowled. "I'm being serious. He rubs me the wrong way. I bet you twenty bucks, Max comes out here soon to tell me that we have to go bust our asses for no credit, no pay, and very little praise."

"But it's for the good of the city," Dix frowned, hands digging, almost protectively, into his customary leather jacket. Yeah, maybe, but Alec was in a bad mood.

"Hey, I got my hands full caring for one city as it is, and that's T.C.," Alec scowled. "We shouldn't have time to pull this kind of crap right now."

He paused, adding a little hopefully, "So, any takers? Twenty bucks?"

"No way," "Uh-uh," "Please, why else would Logan be here?" coupled with a couple of telling snorts.

"See?" Alec sniffed.

"Alec!" Max was leaning out the office hallway, scowling hard. "Get in here," She slammed the door and he could practically hear her stomping her way back to her office.

Why was his life some damn predictable? And why did it have to suck so bad? Alec sighed, headin' back towards a reaming that was sure to be comin' his way. If Max was pissy, that means Logan had probably tattled on him, the big jerk.

"Whipped," Mole coughed into his hand.

"I heard that," Alec scowled, but kept on walking. He slipped into the back just as someone short and red-headed was slipping into the front, comin' back from the training room.

Alec and Marcy stared at each other for a long moment. Marcy turned as red as her hair and Alec cleared his throat.

"Uhhh-" He started.

"ALEC!" Max's voice was loud n' clear.

"I gotta go," Alec all but shoved his way past the curly-haired woman, and the confrontation he so didn't want to have. Hurting feelings was so not on his agenda for today.

"Yeah, Max?" Alec peeked around the door.

"Get in here," Her voice was low and dangerous.

He all but darted in, pretending he couldn't feel Marcy's large green orbs bearing into his back. He slumped in relief once he was in… until he realized that the whole 'from the frying pan and into the fire' analogy would work pretty well here.

Max was livid.

"What's up, Max." His smile was forced, his tone conversational.

"Mission. Tomorrow. 8 PM." She was practically grinding her teeth.

Maybe this wasn't the best time for this, but... He grinned. "Me. Tarzan. You. Jane."

Her palm slammed into the desktop and he winced. Yeah. Not the best time for that. "Will you please be serious for once?" She demanded, not even remotely amused.

"Only if you start forming some complete sentences," He scowled back. "Lighten up."

"Excuse me if we're not all free spirits like you, Alec." Max argued, her hands waving in annoyance. "So sorry we can't just say what we want, when we want, despite who might be listening."

Oh crap, Logan must have told Max he'd overheard him saying she wanted to break up with him.

"I didn't know Logan was listening," Alec frowned, defensive. "You said it first."

"I never said that!" She'd never called Logan stupid before in her life! And Ordinary… well… maybe once or twice, but only because it was common terminology within T.C.'s gates, and she'd picked it up. "I'd _never_ say that!"

Okay, so maybe she hadn't come right out and admitted that she was going to break up with Logan, but still, the meaning had been there. Blah, blah, boo hoo, I'm a danger to him, let me talk at you until I convince myself I shouldn't be with him. "We both knew what you were getting at, though." He pointed out, his face hard.

Max pushed away from her desk, rising to her feet in a fury. "What is this, some sick kind of childish jealousy?"

"Are you kidding me?" He exploded. She was the one that'd been whining at him in the first place! Was it his fault the man she wanted to break up with had overheard him and made her feel bad about it? "What the hell is wrong with you? This is your baby, not mine."

"Me?!" She demanded. "You're the one that-"

"You know what," Alec shook his head. "I don't even have time for this. I gotta work with the X-6's today." He spun on his heel, but her low voice made him freeze, his hand on the knob of the door.

"I don't think you should," Max said, in that sweet voice she only used when she was beyond angry, her head cocking to the side. "Obviously you're not thinking straight. Maybe you should take the day off."

"Are you suggesting that, or are you telling me, _Max_." Her name was hard and angry in his mouth as he glanced over his shoulder. His green eyes were sparking, burning. One of the few things he enjoyed, was good at doin', and she was gonna try and pull this shit?

"I'm saying get your act together," Max hissed, dropping the sweetness. "If you want to keep helping out around here, start being a good influence."

Alec stared at her for a long, hard moment. Finally he frowned. "A person could grow old, tryin' to figure you out." He yanked open the door.

"Where are you going?" She demanded.

"Home," His voice rose in anger. "'Cuz apparently, the X-6's can't handle my corrupting nature." The door slammed behind him.

Max scowled hard at her office door, her nails biting into the edges of her desk. Right before she slumped back into her chair and a strange, wracking sob moved across her frame, just for a second. What- She pushed down the blinding unhappiness, pulled the anger back to the forefront.

This was his fault anyway, she straightened, muscles like steel, for being petty and mean. Times like this, she wondered why she bothered bein' friends with him at all.

But a small part of her wondered; why'd Logan have to bring it up anyway? Why couldn't he have left well enough alone?

But this wasn't Logan's fault. This was Alec's, and his jealousy, and end of the week, she was revoking the Claim and never looking back. Maybe even sooner. The unhappiness was still roiling under the anger, and, drowning in unhappy confusion, Max thought maybe as soon as possible would be best for everyone involved.

"Alec?" It was Marcy, still in the hallway, a hand reachin' out towards him, but he brushed right past her.

Command was still, silent, as he swept his way through, eyes tracking his angry movement.

"And you wonder why I don't like Logan Cale," Mole murmured to Dix, watching their friend shove through the front doors.

Marcy made herself small as Max stomped out of her office only moments later. The brunette hardly paid her any attention.

"Mole!"

"Jesus!" Mole started, whirling back to the opened hallway door.

"You got the X-6's today," Max scowled at him.

Mole shifted from foot to foot. Finally grabbed for his shotgun. "Busy," He grunted, turned on his heel, and stomped out.

"Peta?" Max called.

"Went home to catch some sleep," Dix supplied.

Dammit. Max was turning, when a familiar, too familiar, voice caught her ear.

"I'll do it,"

She turned, and there was Zane's clone, sitting on a gray sofa, his pose too relaxed to really be calm. Ugh. Brock.

Still, not like anyone else was jumping at the chance.

"Fine," She scowled. "You got 'em the rest of the week. First screw-up and your ass is gone, pal."

Brock stood slowly, lookin' like he didn't care much either way. His eyes held a glint of… something… though. Purpose, maybe? Maybe Alec was right. Maybe all he needed was something to do.

Brock held the door, let her slip back in before him, and she pretended not to see Marcy on her stomp back to her office as well. She almost wanted to turn and snarl at the woman, _he's all yours, sister... _

And she might have, if she hadn't known that Marcy was completely wrong for Alec.

_Like you're so much better_, something whispered in her mind.

Her door slammed with a satisfying thwack.

* * *

Mole caught up with him on the corner of 6th and Vine. He pretended he couldn't hear the larger man's boots scuffing on the sidewalk behind him, just kept on walking.

"Jeez, will you slow down?" His friend grunted from behind.

"Not really in the mood, Mole." Alec frowned.

Mole jogged the rest of the way, breaking even with Alec's stride.

"Wanna go take potshots at the protestors?" Mole asked mildly, lifting his shotgun slightly in indication.

Alec's eyes flicked towards him and finally he fell still. "She drives me so fucking crazy!" He grunted, his hands lifting a little, clenching white-knuckled in frustration and anger.

"Take that as a no." Mole said blandly.

"Sometimes," Alec scowled, ignoring him, looking down at flexed forearms, tight fists. "It's like she and I and are talking about two completely different things,"

"Would you settle for throwing some water balloons at them?"

"Mole," Alec grunted, letting his arms drop back to his side. "I'm trying to be annoyed here."

The tall transhuman rolled dark eyes. "Yeah, blah, blah, it's a Wednesday, Max is a drama queen, been there, done that," Mole shrugged, and added, "What else is new?"

"Whatever, I know you secretly love her," Alec muttered, turning on his heel, resuming his angry stalk across filthy concrete.

"So, we going to shoot us some trannie hating slime or what?" Mole fell in step with his friend, his voice a little too hopeful to be strictly joking.

"Maybe later," The X-5 grunted. "I need a drink."

"See above, every Wednesday." Mole grunted. "What else is new?"

* * *

No one bugged her the rest of the day. It would have been peaceful if she hadn't gotten the feeling that people were tiptoeing past her office, avoiding her. She'd gotten a lot of sorting done, her desk was almost clear, and soon she'd have to find something else to do when she wasn't busy leading missions to rescue transgenics or protecting from outside invaders or being the political face of transgenic nation… Sometimes Max thought she might have distributed responsibility a little too well. Alec said it was a sign of a good leader but Max was just kind of bored.

Shadows were lengthening across her almost cleared desk. A desk she could hardly see anyway, dark eyes as distant as they were. Her mind kept going back to the confrontation with Alec. How easy it'd been to escalate into shouting.

She sighed. And though she'd been thinking obsessively about it for most of the afternoon, she wondered again, if some of the aggressiveness of the Claim, some of the frustration, had played a part in their words.

But they'd always been a little hot, a little cold, towards each other. Their relationship, on a good day, had always seemed a little bipolar. Her head sank back into her chair, the chair he'd presented to her with a wicked grin. Max smiled. The chair he'd pulled away, shortly afterwards, just as she was about to sit down, sending her crashing to her ass. Max scowled.

Maybe she and Alec were just destined to be back and forth with each other for the rest of their lives. Maybe they'd never find common ground. Maybe she should stop trying.

_Like you're tryin' so hard right now,_ that traitorous part of her mind whispered. Stupid mind! It wasn't her fault he was acting like a jealous idiot, going around, calling her boyfriend (no matter that she'd been thinkin' about breaking up with him) stupid. Who knows what else he was saying behind her back. He might even be talkin' about her, for all she knew!

But he wouldn't do that, she sighed, before she could work up a good, angry lather. Maybe he wasn't always ideal, but he was one of her best friends, one of the few people she could completely trust. He was her Second, and he was dependable, and oh crap, guess he wouldn't be coming with her tomorrow night on her mission… not unless she found a way to suck it up and apologize for shouting at him, not asking if maybe Logan had taken it out of context before she blew up in his face… right after he apologized first for doing the same damn thing and being kind of a jerk in general.

Well. There was one good thing out of all of this. Established boundaries? Definitely back in place. If Max saw Alec again tonight, she had a feeling that kissing him? Probably not the first thing that would come to mind.

A gentle knock, and even though she knew it wasn't him, she couldn't help the little bit of hope. "Yeah?"

But no, it wasn't a brunette but a blonde that glanced around her door, stepping a little too surely into her office.

"All done?" She asked, trying to be nice. He'd helped out after all.

Brock nodded. "Went pretty good," He shrugged, lean shoulders rising and falling a little half-heartedly. Max couldn't help that she compared his shrug to one made with broad shoulders and found it lacking. "Maybe I have a knack," He continued.

"Try to contain your enthusiasm," Max shook her head wryly.

Brock started, then smirked a bit. He leaned next to her door, and okay, when had he decided to start being nice? "People skills, never been my strong point (He ignored Max's snort), I'm more of a hands on kind of guy,"

"What?" Max demanded. "Like fixin' stuff?"

He nodded, green eyes warming at the thought of motor oil and wrenches and everything like that. "Cars, mostly. Motorcycles, too, when I can get my hands on one."

Hadn't Zack told her, almost a lifetime ago, that Zane had worked in an auto shop? How similar was Brock to her lost brother? She told herself that connecting to Brock wouldn't connect her to her brother, but maybe Alec was right. Maybe they just had to throw him a line once in a while. "You like bikes?" She asked, a little grudgingly.

Brock's eyes lit up.

* * *

Four blocks over, spotless windows weren't letting as much light in as they had when they'd first started drinking. The sun was waning, and Mole finally clicked on the lights of his apartment as a concession to the time.

"I miss Josh," Alec waved his cup a bit, lounging in a chair at the small dining table. "He had a way with Max, you know? Always knew how to calm her down, soften her up,"

"Are we still talking about her?" Mole topped off his friend's waving cup with the last of his primo moonshine, wincing as it some of it sloshed over the edge to the carpet. "Can we talk about something that doesn't annoy me for a change?"

"Like what?" Alec turned to his friend, eyes glinting with the first hinted effect of alcohol. "Like Gem?"

Mole stiffened. Stomped back to his kitchen cabinets to pull one open and grab another jug. "Don't wanna talk about her," He muttered. On second thought, he replaced the jug, reached far into the back of the cabinet and pulled out something he'd been saving for a special occasion.

"Why don't you just ask her out?" Alec asked.

"Are you kidding?" Mole grunted, refusing to turn, pretending interest in the clear bottle's clear contents. "_Look_ at me,"

Alec, hearing his friend's normally hard voice soften in something painfully like defeat, let it go. He cleared his throat and went back to safe ground. "You think Josh will ever wander back into T.C.?" He asked instead. "He's been gone for three months. I told him he'd never find Sandeman, but-" Alec left off with a shrug. Took a swig from the amber colored liquid in his plastic cup. Wondered why his teeth seemed a bit numb. Whatever this stuff was, it definitely wasn't only .06 percent.

Mole filled another cup with the stronger stuff. Downed half of it, filled it back up, and crossed the room to switch cups with Alec. Alec peered at the almost clear liquid in suspicion before shrugging and tossing it back. And promptly leaned forward, hacking in pain.

"What is that?" He wheezed, looking up, his eyes watering. "Paint thinner?"

"Haven't named it yet," Mole grunted. "You're gonna be my guinea pig."

"Gee, thanks," He didn't look particularly grateful.

Mole shrugged. "Hasn't killed me yet,"

Alec looked a bit doubtful.

"Your teeth numb yet?" Mole asked.

"Getting there, why?" Alec asked in suspicion.

"We've been drinking for a while now." Mole grunted. "This is what should finally be able to knock you off your ass."

Alec paused, and he looked at the cup again in a newfound kind of respect. "Really?"

Mole shrugged. "Only one way to find out."

* * *

"That's ridiculous," Max was rolling her eyes, leaning back against her desk. "Just because a bike has higher cc's doesn't make it better. You can get just as much done with a 600."

"That's a wimpy way of looking at it," Brock shook his head, still sitting, lazily, in one of her bitch chairs. "Don't you prefer the higher power?" His eyes glinted, and Max snorted as she heard the unspoken finish; _between your legs_. Typical man.

"Don't be a pig," She grunted.

He smiled a bit, and oh, gross, was he flirting? "I didn't say anything."

She smirked. "You didn't have to, I could-"

"Max, what's this I hear about-" Peta trailed off, looking between the two transgenics leaning towards each other.

Her nose crinkled in an expression that Max didn't quite know what to make of. "Hey guys… What's up?"

Max straightened slowly. "Just talkin' bikes," she shrugged.

Peta was lookin' at the back of Brock's blonde head. "Uh-huh."

Max sighed. "What do you need, Peta?"

Peta leaned into the door frame. "Need to talk to you,"

"If this is about Alec," Max sighed.

Peta stiffened, and relaxed once more, and wouldn't look away from the back of Brock's head. He scratched at his barcode, almost like her gaze was starting to crawl up his spine, starting to bother him.

"Nope," Peta frowned. "We need to talk. About _Alpha _stuff." She stressed the word. And the blonde X-5 before Max stiffened, finally turning to look at the female, leaning in the doorway.

And in her first sign of obvious animosity, Peta's head lowered, her bangs shadowing her hard eyes. "That means you need to leave, pup."

Brock rolled his eyes, but pushed himself out of the chair. He had to squeeze around Peta, who didn't move to let him pass. Power plays, Max was still getting used to them. Everyone was, as instinctual as they were.

"What the hell was that about?" Max demanded when the heavy door had slammed behind the man's backside.

Peta seemed annoyed. "So," She started, leaning into the wall by the door. "You yelled at Alec loud enough for everyone to hear."

"And?" Max interrupted. "What else is new?"

Peta, respectfully, ignored her. "You yelled at Alec loud enough for everyone to hear, despite all the rumors circulatin' about you two being mated, and gave his job to someone nowhere near as close to him in status, someone who's sniffing around you to boot."

Max started. "What? Brock is not-"

"Brock doesn't care about status, 'cuz he's full of himself and thinks his charm and intelligence and good looks can win you over," Peta interrupted with a scowl, her voice going hard, "But if you think you can replace Alec with a little skeeze-ball like that-"

"What are you talking about?" Max demanded. "All we were doing was talking. And, since you obviously heard the story already, Alec stomped his way out of here. I had to get _someone_ to work with the X-6's."

Peta was frowning in suspicion. Maybe the story had inflated a bit in the retelling; 'cuz rumors were that Max was the anti-Christ, and had relieved Alec of command and given it to Brock and- Ugh. Where was Mole when you needed him? Big scaly pain in the ass or not, at least his gossip was always true.

Peta peered hard at her commander. "So you didn't relieve Alec as Second?"

"No!" Max scowled, her tone of voice illuminating how ridiculous she found the possibility. But after a moment, she added in an annoyed grunt, "But I'm thinkin' about it, big jerk that he is."

Peta relaxed, 'cuz she could tell her Fearless Leader was just joshin'. But just to be on the safe side, Peta frowned. "You know Brock doesn't have half the status that Alec does, right?"

Max shifted in discomfort. Yeah, it was something she could feel, the way that Alec kind of filled a room, but Brock barely blipped on her radar. Not something she really liked to talk about, not something that any trannie really liked to talk about. Sometimes she thought Peta was a different kind of breed; she seemed to accept her transgenic nature the same way she accepted her lesbianism; with arms wide open. "What's that got to do with anything?" She scowled, instead.

Peta kept lookin' at her for a long moment. She didn't know Brock very well, but she could read people, and he'd definitely been sniffin' around Command lately, lookin' for a way into Max's good graces. Don't get her wrong, for all she knew, he could be an okay guy. But Peta had already decided who was gonna win in the long run, and it sure as hell wasn't gonna be no little half-status, non-Alpha, narcissist.

"You realize that a few months ago, Brock was the one hinting that Alec should be leading T.C., right?" Max was still talking and Peta snapped back to attention.

Peta smirked. "Ah, Max, give a boy a taste of power, and suddenly he'll start thinkin' he's a man." Then added with a snort, "Besides, a few months ago? Think of how much changes here in the span of a week, much less a few months."

"Whatever that means," Max rolled her eyes. "Did you just come here to get pissy on your wannabe twin's behalf?"

"Yes," Peta admitted. "What?" She defended, when Max twisted her lips in annoyance and leveled her with a stare. "I love that guy, if in a kindred-spirit, bro's-before-ho's, totally non-romantic sort of way."

Max snorted, not even tensing. Peta, as annoying, as beautiful, as she was, just couldn't come across as a threat right now. Not when she was still all spun about her fight with Alec.

"You feel kinda bad about yelling at him, don't you?" Peta asked, relaxing slightly, softening a bit. She shrugged. "Eh, don't worry about it. He's a man, he needs to be put in his place every once in a while.

"What?" Max demanded. "I thought you were on team Alec!"

Peta shrugged again and smirked evilly. "That's when I thought you had relieved him of command. You know I love you in an opposite-spirit, ho's-before-bro's, totally romantic sort of way."

Max snorted, "Shut up, Peta."

Peta twisted thick hair over her shoulder, asking in curiosity, "What started the fight anyway?"

"Alec called Logan a stupid Ordinary." Max grunted, her face clouding. "After everything he's done for us."

"Aaaand, I'm back on team Alec," Peta dropped her hair, shaking her head. "C'mon, Max, who doesn't call Logan that?"

"What?!"

"Besides the fact that that sounds like an argument between five year olds… Alec? Alec's usually one of the one's trying to keep the peace. He sometimes even kind of… (here Peta made a face, like it grossed her out) _respects_ Logan for his Eyes Only work. He'd never say something like that." Peta frowned. Then amended. "Except when he's annoyed. Or grumpy. Or joking. Or it's involving you and your relationship and how damn pushy Logan can be." Peta frowned, and after a moment added, hoping Max might see, "Or if what he's saying has been taken completely out of context and distorted to make him look like the bad guy."

"Logan wouldn't do that." Max scowled. Then sighed. "But Alec did look kind of tired today."

"He was probably just jokin', Max," Peta replied blandly. "And then your guys'es whole love bipolar thing ("Hey!") blew everything out of proportion."

Max just glared. 'Cuz her thoughts had been guiltily following the same kind of track almost all afternoon… and evening. The sun was down now. Alec hadn't shown back up to yell at her. His lack of appearance meant he was really pissed, the stony, cold kind of pissed that was the worst kind, that she hated the most. She should be just as angry, but a small part of her ached for him. Ugh. How horrible.

"You eat yet?" Peta asked.

"Not hungry," Max murmured in distraction. "Probably gonna go home here in a minute. Eat there."

"That way it'll be easier for Alec to find you and apologize," Peta smiled knowingly.

"Yeah," Max nodded. Then started, and glared into Peta's laughing eyes. "Shut up,"

Peta opened the door for her, slipped out after her. The night crew was filtering into command, to monitor the cameras, to gear up for sentry duty. Peta's eyes flicked across familiar faces before she remembered that Jay, Clara's honey bunches of oats, wasn't scheduled again until tomorrow night.

"Hey, Max," Carter was getting back from his own long work day. Problem with most Alpha's? Besides the snark thing? Workaholics, the lot of them. One of the reasons she had and Alec had so little to do lately except be political figureheads and crack mission commandos; the well-oiled machine they were running wasn't in any danger of breaking down. She wouldn't be surprised if Jeri was still making her rounds to the Med Stations, inventorying supplies… if she wasn't still workin' with Max's blood sample. And Switch… she hadn't seen Switch since the Command meeting on Monday, who knows what that girl was up to.

Max, thought, not for the first time, that she needed some more men on her staff. But males had to be pretty powerful to beat out the females, whom Nature had given a natural edge.

"Max," Guess Carter wasn't just saying hey, after all. He was frowning at her, blue eyes shining in his fair skin. "Some of the trannie's on Oak Street… Well, there's some talk…" He frowned, trying to find a way to come out and just ask…

"Riled up again?" Max sighed. She liked to pretend that she didn't know that Alec didn't sometimes have to shove faces into concrete. That he didn't have to sometimes be the one to put some of the muscle-bound idiots back in place. "That's kind of Alec's department. I'll talk to 'em if you want, but if we're talking bleeding elbows-" It hurt her to even say that it was necessary, but six months had taught her… She could talk 'til she was blue in the face, she could have an edge in the Alpha category on every damn transgenic in this city, thanks to perfect DNA, but sometimes… sometimes Alec and his stupid larger muscle mass had to be the one to take care of things. She didn't have to like it, but she could look a little to the left and accept it.

Carter blinked. Before his eyes narrowed. "You want…" He paused slightly, sneakily… "your _Second_ to take care of it?"

Max stared at him, her mouth twisting. "That's what I said, isn't it?"

More than one tense shoulder was relaxed in relief.

"So what's the problem?" Max demanded, 'cuz she wasn't blind.

"Nothin'" Carter shrugged, then, because it was kind of his job. "Nothin' except that rumor is you and Alec threw down this afternoon, and you beat him, so he stepped down as Second and left T.C."

Max's mouth dropped open. "Are you _kidding_ me?!" Her eyes swept across the room, lookin' for the unofficial leader of the transhumans. Her voice descended to an annoyed mutter. "Where the hell is Mole, isn't it usually his job to control what gets around? I thought the whole point of him information mongering was to give us control of all the damn gossip."

Carter's mouth worked in shock for a few moments before he was finally able to demand, "Wait, are you serious?! That's _planned_? I thought he just liked it!"

Max smirked, and Carter's esteem for his Fearless Leader skyrocketed drastically. Boredom could make gossip spread like wildfire through the enclosed area of T.C.. And while most of it was harmless, some of it could cause needless panic, such as if the rumors were to involve the military, or bombs, or the upheaval of the chain of command, like it had today in Mole's absence. Everyone knew that Mole was the best source for gossip, so naturally everyone always checked with him, and word got around, and when he kept it in check, suddenly the worst, most harmful, of the whispers disappeared, and… wow, she was awesome.

"I think I love you," Carter blinked.

"Don't tell Carly," Peta snarked.

"You know what this means?" Max sighed.

"Gonna have to figure out a way to show all of T.C. you and Alec are still the bestest of buds?" Peta asked.

"Pretty much," Max grunted. "If I can ever find him…"

"Please," Peta rolled her eyes. "It's a Wednesday. It's hump day, tensions are always high, and you guys always end up fighting about _something_. He's probably drinking with the lizard as we speak. They'll both amble in tomorrow, actin all chummy, probably in better moods."

"You don't like Mole, much, do you?" Max turned to blink at her friend.

Carter grinned. "I think it's jealousy. If Peta had ever met Josh, I don't think she'd like him either; she wants Alec all to herself."

Peta sniffed. "Don't you have to go home and sleep, Half-Life?" It was one of Peta's favorite terms for those without shark DNA… they had to sleep during the night, and so lost half their lives, or so she insisted when she was trying to be annoying.

Everyone knew she meant; she was just jealous 'cuz she couldn't take a nap whenever she wanted, only got a couple of hours during the day, once every couple of days. "Leavin' right now, vampire," Carter grinned.

"I'm going, too," Max sighed. "Gonna go eat, see if Alec shows up on my doorstep with half a buzz (which was also known to happen on a Wednesday) and an idea on how to fix all the rumors. I might be back in later; try and get some work done or something."

"See ya," Peta shrugged. Her shoulders squared as she turned away, becoming all business, and she started calling out names. Some of the sharkies started ambling up to the woman to get their night assignments as Max finally pushed her way out into the evening air.

Her quarters weren't too far away, closer than Alec's, so she didn't have to face too many curious, probing eyes. She nodded briskly, but didn't stop to talk, no matter how intense a stare might be, how hard the questions might be burning behind pursed lips.

She took the steps two at a time. She kind of wished Josh was here. He knew how to deal with Alec. He could soften something within her friend that Max could not, not without breaking down and crying about Ben, not without the accompanying pain of losing another friend to a raid. Josh… She'd told him he'd never find Sandeman… but… he'd insisted, and he was a grown man and her friend, and he had to do what he had to do.

Max paused on the second floor landing, staring down the hallway, looking at a figure slumped on the ground against her door.

"Alec?" She questioned softly. And then more firmly, as worry grew. "Alec?" She flew down the hallway. Oh god, what had happened? He hadn't gone and got himself shot/beat-up again, had he? She crouched next to him, expression tense, and lifted his face. Then scowled.

"Idiot," She muttered, dropping his jaw. He was just asleep. Her voice startled him awake, his head jerking.

"Max?" He asked, looking up, squinting.

She rolled her eyes, opening her door, pretending not to be amused when he almost fell into her apartment backwards.

"You n' Mole get your Wednesday bonding time?" Max made a face, stepping around him and into her place. Alec lifted himself from the ground slowly, clutching a bit at the door frame as she flicked on the light.

"You okay?" She asked, hesitating.

He shrugged, his face bland. "I'm fine." He eyed her, playing it off. "Still a bit tired. Been waiting here forever. Where you been?"

"Working," Max scowled, and she told herself she was still angry at him as she stomped into her living room, peeling off her customary fingerless leather gloves. "Where you should have been."

"You kicked me out of Command," Alec protested, stepping carefully into her apartment, closing her door extremely gently.

"No, I didn't." She corrected stubbornly, her arms folding across her chest as she turned to him. "I told you to grow up. You kicked yourself out."

"Yeah, but who would want to stay when you were being such a bitch?" Alec asked cheerfully, leaning back into her door, his head falling backwards, eyes closing in gentle amusement.

Max's jaw dropped open.

Before it snapped back shut and she rolled her eyes. Typical Alec. "I hate you sometimes,"

His eyes focused, and refocused, on her. "No you don't, or you wouldn't have Claimed me," His eyes darkened and he pushed away from the door, taking slow, sauntering steps towards her. A smirk bloomed on his face and the air crackled, became alive, and everything became surreal. Maybe it was small spaces… Maybe she shouldn't have let him shut the door. Maybe she should go open a window… get away from him and those lips and those eyes. He was still talking, in that low voice, and Max swallowed a whimper. "If you hated me, would you have let me seen you naked?" He was almost before her, his eyes were glancing across her lips, "Would you have kissed me?" He was getting too close, she was arching towards him, no, she had to put more distance…

She turned and Alec blinked as he was suddenly faced with her rapidly disappearing backside. "We got problems," She declared as she went into her bedroom, her haven of retreat.

"Story of our lives," Alec slumped against her breakfast bar.

"Everyone seems to think that we had a big fight, ("We did," he scoffed) and that you either stepped down as Second or that I relieved you of command,"

"Well," Alec pointed out, "You kinda did,"

"I did not," She huffed. What was she even doing in there, he wondered, his eyes closing. Then he wondered if she was changing, wondered how bad it would be if he very, very carefully made his way over there to check. Time must be all screwy, 'cuz he'd only managed to take one step before she reappeared in a tanktop and formfitting sweats.

"It's not bath night, is it?" Alec asked, eying her hopefully. Hopin' she might break out the robe and the nakedness.

Max wondered at his hopeful expression, asking in confusion. "What?" What, was he tryin' to say she smelled or something? Man, that was childish, even for him.

"Nothing," He sighed, taking a step back, leaning again, into the bar. "So, what are you saying, we gotta act nice the rest of the week, present a unified front so that people don't think we're trying to send their world into upheaval?"

Max frowned. "That and get Mole talking to the right people."

Alec sighed in annoyance, rubbing his eyes. "So much for avoiding you tomorrow,"

"What?!" Max demanded. "You were going to avoid me?!"

"Yeah," He shrugged, smiling in amusement. "But can you blame me? You're kind of a jerk."

"So are you," Max retaliated, and he nodded, like it was a fair statement. She still wanted to be mad at him about Logan but she couldn't work up the annoyance.

"I'd ask you if you wanted coffee, but caffeine's probably the last thing you need-" Max was crossing around him when he lunged, but he took a few too many steps and it was with a grunt that they tumbled over the back of her couch, bounced past her cushions, and crashed to the ground on the other side.

A muffled groan came from under him and Alec lifted his head in worry as the shock wore off.

"Are you okay?" He demanded, eyes darting across her face, worried. "I didn't get your ribs, did I?"

"No," She wheezed, "You big idiot, get off, you're squishing me."

He glanced down. "Oh. Sorry." He lifted his torso, lifted some of his weight off of her, but didn't move away, stayed there between her legs, just staring at her. And he must have realized where he was, because his face went solemn.

This couldn't be good, Max realized.

His hand came up, carefully, brushed away some strands of hair from lips she hadn't known were parted. Fingertips glided across her cheek, and hazel eyes were unblinking, watching as his fingers glanced down her throat, slid against her collar bone.

"Alec, what are you doing?" Her voice was soft. This is not what they needed. They needed boundaries. Clear definitions.

"I'm not… really sure," He frowned. His hands splayed around her, he leaned into his arms, almost in a push-up, close, so close, his breath washing across her face, across her lips, and Max's eyes narrowed as she smelled something tell-tale, right before Alec's lips caught her own.

It was a kiss unlike the first. Wasn't mindless and needy like the one of the previous night. It was slow, and yet insistent, it was firm, commanding, and knowing, and it drew her towards him when he pulled slightly away to gauge her reaction. She released her caught breath, released her tensed toes, and made herself stop trailing after his mouth in disappointment. He smiled, just a bit, waiting until she managed to lift heavy eyelids before he leaned down into one forearm and caught her mouth again, this time more demanding, pulling a hard gasp from her lips and into his. His left hand slid against her arm, up to her shoulder, and a small part of her felt his pinky slide under a spaghetti strap, slide against skin, before lowering the white material away from her shoulder. Her blood was rapidly crashing away from her brain, and she needed… needed to think… He broke away from her mouth, peppering warm, full kisses against the side of her face, down her neck, across a shoulder that felt achingly bare without that thin strip of material.

"Alec," She breathed.

She was still mad at him.

Her eyes shut as he pressed a long, warm kiss into the curve of her shoulder.

They were only friends.

His mouth slid down to her collarbone, his teeth scraping, just for a second. She gasped.

And Logan was her boyfriend.

He pressed an openmouthed, almost nipping, kiss, on the tight skin above her heart. She shifted more fully against him, her knees sliding up around him.

They shouldn't be doing this.

His mouth was sliding against the edge of her white top, little kisses slowly moving the material down, millimeter by millimeter, and he didn't have any intention of stopping.

They shouldn't be doing this, and he smelled like alcohol.

"Alec, have you been drinking?" She gasped.

He paused, his mouth still on skin, and his eyes darted upwards. "Maybe," He murmured, a little guiltily, against her flesh.

Max frowned and pushed him away, sitting up, leaning back into her forearms. "Are you _drunk_?" She demanded, all of his very careful movements suddenly stacking up in her mind.

Alec rolled his eyes, leaning back into his knees, still between hers. "Transgenics can't get drunk," He shook his head.

"How much have you had?" She scowled.

"Doesn't matter," He scowled right back, suddenly annoyed. "Transgenics _can't_ get drunk,"

"Then why are you coming on to me?" She demanded.

"Max, I've been coming on to you since I first met you," He rolled his eyes. Then paused, not noticing Max's blush, saying in wonder, "Wow, did I really just say that? Maybe I _am_ drunk," He shook his head. "Maybe I'm tipsy. Have you ever been tipsy? My inhibitions and my mouth-brain control both seem a little low and that's usually what happens to Sketch when he drinks."

"Alec-"

"Eh," He shrugged, eying her like he was about to do the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life. "It happens," And he hesitated only for a moment before something hardened in his eyes and her leaned back over her, one steady palm sliding the white of her night shirt down. She almost collapsed back into the ground with a gasp as his warm mouth slid surely across her suddenly naked breast.

Boundaries. This was definitely outside the boundaries.

"Alec-" One hand curled over his shoulder, but didn't even make an attempt to push him away. She arched as skin that hadn't even seen a man's eyes in almost two years was suddenly lavished with attention.

His arm slid beneath her waist, she watched the muscle bunch in a blue cotton sleeve, and his tongue swept across her, pulling a moan from her lips, right before he broke away, easily pulling her forward, onto his lap. She felt the muscle in his thighs tighten and he went to his feet in one fluid motion, his arms keeping her steady, so maybe he wasn't drunk after all, at least not in any way that she normally associated with drunkenness.

Her head fell forward, into the crook of his neck, the neck that held her mark, as he carried her to her bedroom. So this was it, two days of back and forth and finally-

Alec tossed her on her bed, onto her brand new sheets. "I'm gonna go take a shower. Maybe it'll clear my head." He was glancing around, like he wanted to make a run for it. He hadn't meant to add that whole 'kiss Max in delicate areas' to his plan, but he was going to blame the Claim and the alcohol if anyone asked.

She sat up. "What?!"

"I can smell Mole's turpentine, and it keeps distracting me," Alec made a face. That, and if he really was tipsy, he wasn't sure he should let Max be taking advantage of him like this. He was pretty delicate.

Wow. Did he say that outloud?

The pillow hit him in the face, but eh, it was a pillow, it didn't hurt.

"Use your own shower!" She shouted as he disappeared into her bathroom. He ignored her, shutting the door, and she scowled, flopping back into bed, righting her shirt with a sudden blush. Man, and she thought she was good at running away.

It never took Alec long to shower, and he was out soon. She was still sitting on the bed, her foot jiggling in impatience and annoyance.

"We still need to talk about tomorrow," Max scowled, eyes flicking across damp hair and a blue shirt, sticking to skin. "And today."

"Can we do that tomorrow?" He sighed, the shower seemingly having washed away some of his playfulness. "I'm really tired. I didn't get any sleep last night," Then he glanced sharply at her. "And what did you mean, when you said earlier that I wouldn't be able to sleep?"

She shrugged, "Just a feeling I had." She eyed him. "You need help back to your apartment?" She asked.

"'S why I showered. I think I can handle it," He sighed, and left without another word. Such was their oddball relationship.

A knock at her front door would pull her from a magazine almost an hour later.

"Can't sleep," He muttered, looking frazzled and tired and every bit as bad as he had the night she'd claimed him.

She stepped aside with a sigh, let him in.

And when he was curled behind her, his breathing even in sleep, his arm draped around her torso, pressing against her breasts, she'd wonder what had happened to the nice, normal life that she used to have.


	5. Thursday

A/N: Hell, I figure if a few (very few... okay, one) of you can be rude when requesting updates, then I can give you an update that's so long, your butt will fall asleep. Seriously. I don't know how many times I have to say this: I have an extremely stressful career, and I write when I can. Pushing me for updates won't give me more time to write, so why be rude about it? This isn't directed to the person that just PMed me (woulda told you, but you have your PM function turned off), just to anonymous reviewers (okay, one) in general.

Other then that; Enjoy. :)

* * *

_Thursday_

* * *

It was the second time in a week she woke up to warmth. Her bedroom had a bit of a draft; one she didn't bother tracking down and sealing up because she hardly slept and so didn't spend enough time in here for it to bother her. She usually woke up to cold sheets, rolled out of bed, and moved on. So waking up curled around a human furnace came as a little bit of a shock.

Once again, Alec had managed to flop to his back, directly to the center of the bed like the true space hog he was, and Max had somehow managed to completely roll in her sleep and wrap around him. She was tucked under his arm, her face pressed into his shoulder, and his arm was wrapped around her. His other hand was resting lightly on her knee, which was drawn up over him. Her nose wasn't buried in her mark, seeing as how she was on the wrong side for that, so that was a good thing, but her fingers were resting lightly against it… which was... well, not so good. She pulled her hand away, let it just rest there at the hollow of his throat instead, not willing to give up on illusion for now. The illusion that she wasn't alone, that there was someone in her life that she could just hold on to.

How pathetic.

Max did try and pull away then, tried to turn in the darkness to take a look at her clock… but as she stirred, his arm tightened around her, his hand hooked under her knee, drawing her more surely against him, and she glanced up in surprise to find hazel eyes watching her in the soft darkness.

Max wondered if he was even really awake.

"Alec?" She asked softly, relaxing into his side once more.

His head fell back into the pillows, and he murmured something, his grip on her loosening. Guess his cat wasn't keen on her trying to leave.

"Idiot," She muttered, relaxing.

"Bitch," His voice was sleepy but amused.

She started in surprise, and his hand tightened under her knee once more. Like he was keeping her or something.

"I thought you were asleep," She hissed into the darkness.

"I always knew you talked bad about me when you thought I wasn't listening," He murmured back. She bit the inside of her cheek as his hand slid up the underside of her thigh, across her ass, around to her hip. His head turned so he could look at her once more, and he blinked sleepy eyes. "What time is it?"

"I don't know, if you'd let go of me-"

But his bleary gaze had focused over the top of her head, going to the light of her alarm clock's bright face. "It's only five in the morning, Max," He sighed, resting back into her pillows, eyes closing once more. "Go back to sleep."

Yeah right, she had shark DNA, she grumped to herself as his hand splayed on her back, how the hell was she going to-

Max grumbled in annoyance as the first rays of sunshine glanced across her face, her eyes tightening. She fought wakefulness just for a moment before she gave in with an unhappy sigh. She stretched slowly, her arm sliding against the cool material of the…

empty…

sheets…?

What the hell? Max's eyes popped open and her head lifted away from the pillow as she looked at the empty spot next to her. Alec was nowhere to be seen. Nor were his boots, she realized as she sat up in annoyance, the sheets pooling in her lap.

That jerk! Who was he to snuggle half the night then just up and disappear before she could?

* * *

"You left me," She said it almost accusingly, and she wondered why.

"I made you breakfast," He shrugged. Yeah right, as if boiling an egg, burning some coffee, and buttering some toast could count as a true culinary effort… Even if this was Alec they were talkin' about.

"You think you can spend half the night in my bed and just up and disappear whenever you feel like it?" She demanded.

Nearby, someone started choking on coffee. The two transgenics whirled, scowled at Carter, still hacking up liquid, and decided to take their conversation somewhere a little more private.

"I don't really see what the problem is," He followed her into her office.

"We really need to talk about this," She frowned, but not in the normal, bitchy, you-are-too-annoying-to-live way that he was usually accustomed to.

"And that didn't answer my question at all…"

"You running away at zero-dark-thirty is not conducive to us talking," She explained, peevishly.

Wait, is that why she was annoyed? "I did _not_ run away," He frowned.

She turned on him with a scowl. Didn't run away? Ha! He'd even had time to go home, shower, _again_, and change, and that was on top of the amount of time he would have had to have to stumble his way through making her breakfast! Which means he had to have left as soon as she'd fallen back asleep. The idea, frankly, made her outraged. "Crept away, slunk away, apply whatever verb you feel fits best, but any way you slice it, I woke up and your cowardly butt was gone."

Her annoyance made him annoyed. His annoyance made him want to annoy her more. Theirs was an odd, cyclic sort of relationship. "Max, if you want to sleep with me, all you have to do is ask."

It's not even funny how honest that ended up sounding.

Alec didn't have time to dwell on it, because Max was going red-faced, making little choked, stuttering sounds that meant she was going to resort to throwing things soon. Which meant that it was time for him to saunter out, whistling, because if there was anything Max hated more than dirty innuendos she had no response for, it was whistling. She was so enraged, the stapler never even had a prayer of hitting him.

But, oh crap, he had forgotten-

"What time is this thing we're doing for Logan?" He probably shouldn't have stuck his head back in the door. The pen that hit him in it was more aerodynamic and better aimed.

* * *

"What's wrong with your face?"

"Huh? Oh, Max threw a pen at me." Alec rubbed at the mark on his forehead a little absentmindedly, but hardly paused. He was intent on the far corner of Command.

"You two are so weird." Mole shook his head and followed, falling in step next to him. "Wish you would just get it over with already."

"I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but there's no '_it'_ to get over with." Alec grumped.

"I'm sorry, did you say something?" His friend replied blandly back. "I couldn't hear you over the sound of the big fucking bite mark on your neck."

Alec eyed Mole out of the corner of his eye and adjusted his high collar in annoyance. Like Mole could even see the thing when he had this sweater on... "I hate you."

"I bet you say that to all the girls." When Alec just rolled his eyes, Mole continued. "So, what time is this great Eyes Only gig going down? You need some back-up?"

"What time does anything ever go down?" Alec continued in the same grumpy vein. "Right when I'd rather be doing something else after a long day at work."

"So around 8, then?"

"Yeah," Alec frowned. "I'm beginning to think Logan just has his watch set on a timer and doesn't want to change it."

"Would explain why everything always happens at 8." Mole nodded in agreement. He paused for a long moment, before he couldn't contain it any longer. "Okay, so what happened?"

Alec blinked in confusion, and finally fell still. "I'm sorry?"

"Last night," Mole frowned, also stopping, turning to face the shorter man. "After all the drinking. I don't remember much except you said you had something to take care of and then you just kind of rambled off. Well... make that _weaved _off."

Alec's face colored beneath freckles. Why had Mole even let him leave the apartment in that kind of condition? Probably because everyone had been fairly sure that transgenics couldn't get drunk. Well, guess even their metabolism had a critical threshhold, a point at which it could simply not keep up with Mole's surely-nearly-toxic moonshine. "Nothing happened," He muttered, turning on his heel and making his way again towards the very near, sooo close, grey couches and the much needed coffee.

He shouldn't have gotten out of bed so early… who cares if, by staying, he would have had to deal with Max's warmth, Max's smell, Max's body, pressed so closely against his-

Actually, it was probably a good thing he had left so early.

Caffeine had been put on earth for his consumption anyway.

Mole followed like the persistent bastard that he was, oblivious to Alec's rapid descent into grumpiness. "You went to see Max, didn't you? That's what you usually do on Wednesday nights."

"Not every Wednesday," Alec protested. But he was still refusing to look at Mole, focused entirely on the Styrofoam cup he'd pulled from the stack next to the coffee machine. Which to Mole, made it a dead giveaway. Alec didn't notice Mole's eyes narrowing, though. He poured the coffee, every rod and cone within his own eyes trained upon the liquid he was pouring into the cup… As if by doing so, by ignoring the tall lizard man, it would make him magically disappear or something.

"No, not _every_ Wednesday," Mole agreed, eyes still narrowed, and by his continued existence proved Alec's disappearing theory wrong. "Only on the Wednesdays that you two take out your sexual frustration by shouting at each other until you're red-faced."

Alec slammed the pot back into its cradle and turned to look at him in annoyance.

"Sorry, did I say 'sexual frustration' again?" Mole pursed his lips in pretend thought. "It's weird how I keep getting that mixed up with 'aggression'."

Alec sighed and let it go. Mole's blunt, give-a-shit attitude, as annoying as it could be, was also one of the reasons why Alec counted him as one of his better, and more amusing, friends; couldn't very well go expecting the transhuman to change now… He changed the subject instead. "Speaking of aggression, what time is it? The night crew is coming in early for drills, which means I had to put the X-6's training on the schedule for eight." Alec took a warming sip from his cup.

"Uhhh, about that."

Alec turned to look at Carter over his cup, his mouth still fused to the rim.

"Max gave your training lessons to Brock."

Alec sprayed coffee all over the coffee table. If it hadn't been so gross, it might have been a little ironic.

* * *

The door slammed open. Max glanced up. Alec was livid.

"I could _kill_ you."

Max blinked in confusion. "Wha- Relax, Alec, it was just a pen. The mark on your forehead isn't even really that noticeable-"

It derailed him, just for a moment. "Wai- wha?" His hand come up to rub at his forehead. Before he remembered why he was there, his hand dropped back to his side, and he glared at her with all he was worth.

She frowned in question. "Something the matt-"

"Brock?" Alec interrupted her, angrily. And then again, in higher, even angrier tones. "I mean, _Brock?!_"

Max continued to stare at him blankly from her spot behind the desk. "Brock…" She prompted, as if trying to lead him into a legitimate sentence. When he just continued to stare at her like she was the anti-Christ, Max sighed in frustration. "Kinda need you to work with me here, Alec. Brock, what?"

Suddenly the livid, borderline petulant, Alec was gone, and he drew himself up to full height. His voice was hard. "You gave _my_ X-6's to that blonde little weasel?"

"Blonde little-" Max started in confusion, before she caught up quickly to the situation. Crap. She had forgotten to tell him about that last night, seeing as how she'd been so… distracted. Still, like a true commander, she immediately attempted to justify herself. "Hey, waitaminute! You're the one that was sticking up for him, saying he needed more to do around here!"

Now his voice was cold. What the hell was his problem? "When I said give him something to do, I didn't mean give him something of _mine_ to do."

Max pushed herself away from the desk, growing more confused with each passing moment. Alec was usually all about trying to worm his way out of responsibilities… Actually, to be completely honest, Alec was more all about trying to worm his way out of Eyes' Only missions… He was slightly more dependable where it came to TC and to the X-6's…

He did kind of have a soft spot for the 6's…

But that wasn't the point. The point was that Alec's sudden rage was very, very unlike him.

She stood slowly, and said as gently as possible. "Alec, is this you talking, or is this the claim talking?"

Alec's eyes narrowed. "I told you he had a thing for you, why would you give him an opening like that?"

Guess that answers that question.

"An opening?" Max asked, confused. She crossed around the desk. "Alec, you weren't _around_! I had to get _someone_ to work with the 6's. What was I supposed to do? Cancel it? Those little troublemakers barely have enough to do as it is." Her voice remained level and she was making her way slowly towards him. Something in her told her that if she could just _touch_ him, everything would be okay. She just needed to-

Alec craned his neck to look at the clock above her doorway. The second hand was rapidly approaching the 12. The kids were probably already in there, starting their warm-ups. Before Max could reach him, Alec had spun and stalked out of her office without another word, leaving her there, gaping like an idiot, hand still partially outstretched.

Her mouth snapped shut. Her hand fell back to her side.

"Well... crap."

She only let herself wallow in self-pity, aware of the very public events that were bound to be happening, in oh, thirty seconds, before she booked it out the door, hot on Alec's heels.

"Alec, this is a bad idea." She trotted to keep up, her voice beginning to strain with annoyance. "Let me talk to him, let him know that I'll find something else for him to do."

"And since when," Alec kept walking, and his voice was even harder, if that was possible. "have you two been on speaking terms?"

"Last night," she said it before she really thought it through. "He stopped by the office and we bullshitted about bikes for… a… while?" She trailed off, slowing to a stop behind Alec's immobile form. He glared at her balefully over his shoulder, like that had only made it worse, before pushing through the heavy swinging doors that led into the training room. Max sagged for a moment... And popped back up, pretending at strength, when a familiar voice swept down the hallway.

"Hey, Maxie!" Peta waved from down the hall. Her thick hair was up in a high ponytail, and she was sporting some dark capris and a matching sports bra. Her ultra-white tennis shoes seemed glaringly out of place; the fashion mistake of the century, not that Peta gave a crap. She jogged over to her commander, smiling. "Figured I'd help my favorite Second in Command with the 6's today. It'll warm me up for later..." She glanced over Max's morose face, and her own cheery smile fell. "Why the long face?" She glanced at the doors to her left, the doors Max was currently staring a hole through, took a quick step, pushed a door open and glanced inside. It only took one quick look for her to pull back out immediately and turn wide eyes on Max. "You did tell Brock he was only workin' with the X-6's for one day, right?"

"I told him all week." Max replied morosely.

"Well... crap."

"That's what I said."

"Stay out here," Peta frowned, facing the door, squaring her tan shoulders, and steeling herself. "I'll take care of this." When Max started to protest, Peta just glanced at her over one shoulder. "Trust me, Max. If you're in there, you'll only make it worse for Brock."

"Peta," Max called, just as the other woman was about to push into the training room. Peta paused. "Don't… don't let him hurt Brock _too _badly."

Peta glanced at her, again, over her shoulder, and in her olive green eyes, for a moment, Max thought she saw something. Something a whole lot like, _you brought this on yourself_. The Grecian looking girl seriously considered Max's words for a long moment. And then shrugged. "No promises."

"Peta!"

But the woman was gone, having already pushed through the doorway. Sometimes, Max forgot that Peta operated on a whole different playing field then she did; most transgenics struggled through their weird animal instincts while still attempting to operate under human guidelines. Not Peta; she seemed to instinctually understand the deepest workings of transgenic nature. Not only that, but she _accepted_ it as well (which, unfortunately for her, more often than not got her in trouble with the transgenics who weren't so accepting of the weird jungle cats that sometimes shared their head space). Peta probably thought a little rough handling was needed to set Brock down a few pegs…

And, even worse, at the end of the day, as annoying as it was to admit, Peta would always be more Alec's friend than she was Max's. Undoubtedly, she would be siding heavily with Alec on this one. And, even best of all, to top it all off, she had never liked blonde Brock to begin with.

…but surely she wouldn't stoop so low as to let Alec wipe the mat with the smaller man… Max shook her head. Of course not. Probably, not.

Well, maybe.

Max let herself pace once past the door. And then again, in the other direction. And then she couldn't take it anymore; the energy was simply overwhelming.

Adrenaline was crackling through her body and Max's hands were clenched nervously. She abruptly fell still, mid pace, planted herself in front of the doors and stared hard at them, almost like she was trying to stare _through_ them. If she didn't know any better, she'd say she was resisting the urge to _twitch_. It was almost like the feeling she got when Alec walked into a room, only this time, it was stronger… not nearly as pleasant… and oddly enough, she wasn't entirely sure these feelings were _hers_. All of her anxiety seemed to be originating from behind the heavy doors in front of her. Or at least that's what she tried to convince herself. This sort of apprehension couldn't possibly be her own, could it? Max chewed her lip for one long moment, one short eternity… And as odd as it was, a thought suddenly offered itself up to her...

…What if, as unlikely as it would be, Brock actually fought back…

What if he touched what was hers?

Max pushed through the doors before she even had a chance to reconsider Peta's warning.

The adrenaline spike she'd been cruising on had obviously been unnecessary. In fact, there was hardly anything to worry about; there wasn't an aggressive death match going on at all. There was, however, a marked air of _waiting_, a current of electricity that was coursing through the room. A few people were still sparring or warming up, but most were watching the silent drama that was unfolding in the center of the mats. Most of the onlookers weren't over 16, though, and the vast majority of them were really only pushing 14, thank goodness, so maybe news of Alec's manly posturing wouldn't spread too far...

Still, whatever it was Max had walked in on, maybe it wasn't fighting, but it wasn't exactly all hugs and puppies, either. Alec was glowering down at Brock. Brock was glowering up at Alec. And Peta was standing next to them, facing the door, glowering at anything that moved.

Not as silent as Max had first thought, she realized as she approached; Peta was using words to go along with that 'Don't Fuck With Me' stare. "See, it was all just a simple misunderstanding, right?" She paused, and when neither man had said anything, she stressed it again, "_Right_?"

Brock was the first to look down. "Yeah, sure."

Peta turned to look at Alec, and had to work hard to control the quirking smile when he didn't look away from Brock, just folded his arms across his chest and said in a hard voice, "I'm sure it's nothing that will be happening again."

Max's face twisted in confusion. What was that about? Had Brock talked back to Alec when he'd first walked in?

Well, duh, when didn't Brock talk back to Alec, or to anyone with any remote amount of influence. Guy had some serious authority issues. Still, everyone was unbloodied and in one piece. Guess she hadn't really had anything to worry about after all…

"Everything okay?" She smiled entreatingly at the small group.

Alec froze. Peta tensed. Brock turned to look at Max, his head cocking slightly. He started to open his mouth-

"What the hell are you looking at?"

Peta winced. Oh, that really, _really_ didn't sound like Alec. That sounded like a cat, operating Alec's mouth. She snuck a peak; Alec's eyes were still trained on Brock, but his arms had dropped back to his sides, and he didn't seem to like where Brock was looking; that is, directly at Max.

But Brock was abrasive and foolhardy on a good day. On a bad day, he was reckless and kind of a jackass. Figures it would be kind of a bad day.

"Is there a rule somewhere that lets you dictate what I look at, as well?" Brock popped off, his gaze swinging back to Alec. Alec's eyes narrowed. Brock's eyes darted again towards Max. "Actually, you know, now that Max is here, maybe she can settle this." Ah crap, Peta thought to herself, here it comes.

Brock turned towards Max and her deer-in-the-headlight expression. "Max, did you, or did you not, tell me to take the X-6's for the rest of the week?"

Peta turned wide eyes on Max, her lips pressing together, and shook her head slightly; a warning for her commander to be very careful where she stepped. Alec didn't look away from Brock. Max fidgeted. "Well, I _did_, but-"

Peta sighed in exasperation.

"Well, there you go." Brock shrugged, turning back to Alec. "From the horse's mouth; I got the X-6's for the rest of the week. I don't really see what the big deal is, anyway. Think of it as a mini-vacation."

The big deal, Peta scowled, is that both she and Alec had told him in no uncertain terms to step off, and Brock had tried to play the odds, play the power game, instead of doing what he'd been told. You know, she got it, the kid was bored, he needed somethin' to do… but at this point, he was just being an ass. Peta's eyes darted again towards Max. And she was pretty sure she knew why… Pup had eyes for the Queen Bee, and couldn't understand that he could never be what she needed.

But the problem now, was, that everyone was kind of painted in to a corner. Alec had told Brock to step off. He hadn't, which was a direct challenge to him, as the more Alpha of the two and Second-in Command to boot. But Brock had de sotto gotten Max's back up. So now Alec couldn't shake Brock by the back of the neck without making it look like he was challenging Max's authority. Peta wanted to go bludgeon her head against one of those crates. Sometimes being transgenic sucked. Maybe some of the humans wouldn't consciously process all of that crap, but every single cat in the room was tensed and wary, waiting to see what would happen, with or without their human counterparts' knowing.

Alec didn't look down or anything… his gaze just seemed to slide from Brock to Max without giving up an ounce of authority. He stepped off, undoubtedly to pull Max aside and speak to her for a moment-

Peta fought so, so hard to control the smile when Brock solved everyone's problem by interpreting Alec's movement as giving up.

"I guess you were telling the truth," Brock smiled slowly. "You two _aren't_ mated." Alec froze. Oh, if Brock was going where Peta thought he was going, today might be a very, very good day. "Just one-sided, then? Whose choice was that, yours or-"

Brock didn't get a chance to finish, because Alec hauled roughly around and socked Brock in the jaw, sending him to the mat. Max gasped and took a step forward, but Alec didn't immediately descend on the blonde, nor did Brock immediately spring up and try to tackle Alec. Peta took a small step back, her smile falling back into grim stone, realizing that it might look slightly maniacal if she continued to grin while she was standing over Brock's fallen form.

Alec came down to a crouch and his voice was harder than Max had ever heard it. "Let's get one thing straight." Brock glared up at him balefully, rubbing at his jaw. Alec was hardly affected. "I am one of very, _very_ few friends that you have. You really don't want to continue down this path."

He leaned further in, his eyes narrowed, his voice descended to tones meant only for their ears. Max, too far away, couldn't decipher the low murmur, but Peta listened with narrow eyes and a small smirk. "And even if it is one-sided… what makes you think she would break it? That's not the way it works. Transgenics don't break claims to take a step _down_." Alec straightened, frowning, and that could have been it…

But Brock sat up slowly. "And what makes you think it'll ever be anything other than one-sided? She has Logan, remember? I'm not the only one deluding myself... _friend_. At the end of the day, am I really the one you should feel threatened by?" His eyes flicked to Max, still standing, frozen, a few feet away, and Alec's eyes followed.

Peta blanched. Fuck. She'd forgotten how smart Brock was. How devious. She saw the wheels starting to turn in Alec's head as he gazed at Max; she saw the uncertainty. But he controlled it when he looked back at Brock…

And then the weird bastard smiled. "Good talk," Alec patted Brock on the shoulder. "You think you can handle the X-6's today? I need to talk to Max for a while."

What the hell? Max and Peta had never been more sure that they didn't understand men. Especially when Brock just shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so." He worked his jaw for a moment, and then he sighed, his hand dropping to the grey mat. "I don't actually _like_ this job, you know… You think you could try and talk her into setting me up in a mechanic shop or something?"

"I'll see what I can do," Alec stood fluidly, offering Brock a hand. Brock eyed it for a moment, and then grasped the other man's forearm, allowing the larger transgenic to pull him to his feet.

"What the hell was that?" Max demanded, when Alec walked towards her, snagging her elbow and pulling her backwards through the training area.

"We share a common interest. And a common dislike." Alec shrugged. "We bonded."

"But, but-"

"But, what?" He paused once he'd pulled her out the wide, swinging doors. Max wrenched her elbow away from him, glaring balefully. She wanted to say, but that's not at all what she'd been _expecting_ to happen… She thought for sure he'd go crazy jealous and try to pound on Brock.

"What?" He repeated. Then sighed when she still refused to answer. "Alright, I get it. The weird…" He scanned the hallway for listeners, but it was empty, so he continued, "…_situation_, made me a little wound up. But really, Brock is no threat to me." Alec shrugged again, like it was no big deal. "Besides, I might be a little more aggressive than normal, but I'm not the one that staked a claim. The only that has to deal with the crazy jealousy right now is _you_." He pointed out. She stared at him in surprise for a second. Did he really expect her to buy that?

"No crazy jealousy, huh?" She finally lifted one eyebrow. "You wanna explain to me why you punched Brock in the face, then?"

Alec shifted from one foot to the other, before saying grudgingly, "He had it coming. Besides," he added petulantly. "I didn't hit him nearly as hard as I coulda."

Uh-huh. "So, what, it was a warning shot?"

"Maybe," Alec hedged.

"And the reason you called Logan a, quote-unquote, 'stupid Ordinary' was…" She prompted.

"Ah, c'mon, Max. Who doesn't call Logan that?"

Max gaped for a moment. Alec grinned wanly. "Joking, Max. Just joking."

Max huffed, god, he and Peta really _were_ alike, before she turned on her heel and made her way back to her office. Her body was still buzzing with adrenaline from the near-fight, her hands were still antsy. She tried to shake it away, hard to do when Alec was hot on her tail. It'd lessened slightly when Alec had laid Brock out on the mat, but it had all come roaring back when he'd grabbed her elbow as he was making his way out of the training room… And as Alec followed Max through the door of her office, it suddenly occurred to her that all this built up energy, it wasn't actually hers… it was _his_.

The door clicked shut behind him. The air in the room gained about a thousand pounds. The buzzing in her hands started crawling up her arms.

Oh, Christ. He wasn't nearly as normal, as collected, as he'd been letting on. She turned slowly, almost dreading what she'd see. "…Alec?"

His head was cocked, and he was looking at her. His eyes were dark, and his mouth was twisted in thought. He almost looked... he looked like he wanted to _devour_ her. And even worse, God, when he looked like that... he looked _delicious_.

Max swallowed. Alec took a small, sauntering step forward. Max took a hesitant step back.

"Max." He got around to replying to her query.

"…Everything… okay?" Another small step. First from her, and then from him. Her breath seemed to be coming a little bit faster. The wariness was gone from her gaze; maybe it had never been there to begin with.

"Fine." He shrugged slowly, continuing his sauntering steps. "Just thought maybe we could use my suddenly freed up morning to… talk." His eyes dipped down, his gaze slid across her lips. It was almost like a strange, slow kind of chase. "You know… about everything… Or maybe about tonight."

Her pupils expanded rapidly and it never occurred to her very slowly functioning brain that he was talking about the Eyes Only mission that she had been guilted… erm… that she had _volunteered_ for. Like he could sense the derailment of her thoughts, the breath-stopping images, he smiled crookedly, wolfishly.

Guess she had been kind of hogging the animalistic spot-light for a while; guess it was Alec's turn again. Guess this is the part (she bit her lip when his hand came up and slid over her shoulder) where she (she was still walking backwards, and he was still following, but it was no longer so much a chase as it was an inevitability) should start running (her eyes fell shut, her head fell backwards just in time for the back of her thighs to meet the edge of the desk).

"Bad idea?" She breathed, but kept the skin of her neck open for him.

"No idea what you're talking about-" Alec smiled slowly and started to lean in, his lips descending to her throat.

"Hey Max!" The door slammed open and Jeri came through. The two transgenics by the desk sprung apart quickly, and guiltily, but not so fast, and not so innocent, that Jeri didn't fall still and glance between the two of them in suspicion. "Am I… interrupting something?" Funny how she could make such a simple word like 'something' sound so kinky and suggestive.

"Of course not," Max said surely, refusing to even glance at Alec who seemed busy flipping through some papers that had been on Max's desk only moments ago. In fact, Alec was _so_ busy with the papers, and Max had spoken _so_ surely, that Jericho became even _more _suspicious, her eyes narrowing.

"Riiiiight."

"You need something, Jeri?" Max asked, controlling the exasparation.

Jeri promptly forgot the guilty looks that had been on Lord Vader and Young Skywalker's face… well, not completely… Given the weirdness that she had just walked in on, she really needed to come up with new nicknames for Fearless Leader and Trusty Second. But renaming Max and Alec would simply have to wait; this was definitely more important. So long as she got them renamed before the next Command meeting, that is (nothing quite like throwing out a new annoying nickname to distract Max from that pesky Heat suppressant situation).

"Yeah. I need you to come with me, Max."

Max frowned at Jeri's solemn tone, and shared a glance with Alec. Jeri, too, glanced at Alec. And frowned.

"Hey, did you know there's pen on your forehead?"

* * *

Alec had offered to man the fort so that Max could traipse off in the middle of the day and find out why Jeri was about to bust a coronary. And by man the fort, she meant he would prop his old, gross boots on her desk, like he always did, and try to take a cat nap (boy seriously loved his sleep). And there he would probably stay, hardly moving, until Max came back… Unless of course Dix or someone picked up a call on the police scanner about a trannie in trouble or Carter radioed in to tell 'em that the Familiars were probing their defenses again. Or that he needed a snack. It had been a relatively quiet week, though, so Alec probably didn't have to worry about playing crack mission commando. The snack call would probably be the greatest of his concerns while she was gone. Max would have slightly more on her plate, judging by Jeri's quick, trotting pace, and frowning, troubled face.

Max was no idiot; she already had a pretty good idea what this was about. And she was proven all too correct when they reached their destination, T.C. Central's med station, went down a long hallway, past the examination rooms, past the rooms with empty gurneys, empty beds (Max loved slow weeks), and finally down to Jeri's messy office. The short-haired brunette loved an orderly examination room, but for some reason the most alpha of all the medics was unable to find a thing in her own office unless it was underneath three other things.

At the moment, there was only one small clear space upon the messy metal desk, and smack dab in the center of it, sat a microscope. Max sighed as Jeri swung a chair around for her.

"What am I looking for?" Max asked grudgingly, taking the seat that the shorter woman had pulled up for her.

"You'll see," Jeri replied cryptically. Max eyed the medic for a long moment before sighing and turning to the microscope, putting her eye up to the lens. In the right kind of dye, Max's Anti-Logan virus appeared as a kind of purple monstrosity, almost three times the size of a red blood cell. And Jeri was right. She did see, almost immediately, what had given the medic cause to hunt her down.

"It's smaller," Max glanced up, frowning. Almost half its original size, in fact. She looked again.

"It's mutated," Jeri agreed. Then leaned in, over Max's shoulder. "I think. Not all of 'em, though. Enough that within a few weeks, I'd stake money on all of the viruses within your blood bein' in that new, sleeker form." What was it, a car? Max made a face, and pulled her face away from the microscope so she could glare at Jericho.

"Why didn't you tell me yesterday?" She demanded.

Jeri looked away. Well… to be completely honest, she hadn't actually put Max's blood on a mount and stuck it under a microscope until this morning. She'd been so sure that the virus would be the same as it had always been that she had let other things, like putting a band-aid on a wailing mother's relatively calm infant or getting coffee from Command and catching up on the latest gossip, get in the way.

"I was… busy?" She finally managed.

Max sighed, leaning back into the chair. Fair enough, even if it was kind of a lie. "So what does it mean?"

"I dunno." Jeri shrugged.

"Jeri!"

"Well, I don't!" The tawny brunette defended. "But such a radical change in its physical characteristics means that something profound happened on the nuclear level. Something really changed in its DNA." Jeri paused for a long moment. "Either that or something about _your_ cells, the cells that the virus needs to hijack in order to keep replicating, is seriously stunting the virus's growth."

Which could possibly mean that finally, after a year and a half, Max's body was learning to fight back.

Either that or, again, the virus had seriously mutated.

Jeri had been bouncing back and forth between the two theories all morning. It was partly why she was feeling so serious for a change. She hadn't had a good brain challenge in ages. If it hadn't been so troublesome, it would have been a little exciting.

"If it mutated," Max was staring off into space, "is there a chance that-"

Yeah, Jeri knew where Lord Vader was goin'. Blah, blah, blah, if it mutated, was there a chance that it was less of a threat to the Evil Emperor. "That it won't be a danger to Logan anymore? Not likely. Viruses usually mutate to become _more_ effective, Max, not less. More effective at replicating, anyway. This is Manticore's baby, though, so who knows. For all I know the mutation could make breathing the same _air_ as Logan hazardous to his health. Or, it could have become contagious… You could pass anti-Logan germs to anyone you come into contact with."

Max's eyes reached epic proportions. "What?"

Jeri shrugged. "I'm just saying."

"You're just saying?" Max sat upright in her chair. "Jeri, this is kind of a big deal! I need to know for sure."

Jeri was still all seriousness. "I'm aware, Max. Which is one of the reasons I pulled you out here. So you could take a look at it without Alec leaning over your shoulder distracting you from how big this could really be." Like, super dead Logan, big.

Max frowned guiltily and looked away. She wouldn't let this… thing… with Alec distract her from something as huge as her potential lethality to another human being. The fact that Logan was also technically her boyfriend was merely a side note to that. And by technically, she meant Logan was totally her boyfriend… Sort of.

"So, what, I take it you're going to need to run some tests to be sure?"

Jeri nodded, leaning against her desk and folding her arms across her chest. "You're gonna have to get Logan in here. I need a sample, or five, of his blood to work with. He got enough trannie juice left in him to be hangin' out here, what with all the toxins n' all?"

"He's still walking." Max shrugged, though Jeri should have already known that. Or maybe it was just that Max was the only one that _really_ noticed the sound that Logan's exo-skeleton made. Max didn't dwell on the implications.

"I'll take that as a yes, then." Jeri jiggled her foot impatiently for half a moment before she couldn't contain it. "You want to borrow my cell phone to call him?"

"What, _now_?"

Jeri hated a mystery. She wanted answers, "Yes, now."

Max sighed, part of her wanting to keep the mystery a mystery. Like she really wanted to start her day finding out she was even deadlier than normal. Still… "Fine," She said grudgingly, holding out her hand. Jeri immediately turned towards her desk, moved a stack of paper, repositioned a file, shoved aside some ace bandages, and grabbed for her cell phone.

"Your powers of organization astound me." Max said dryly.

"Yeah, yeah." Jeri held out the phone in one hand. "Get dialin'."

* * *

Junior councilmen Jimmy Chang paused in his office doorway, still dialing his cell phone, and glanced up at his secretary. "Did you cancel my dinner with the Mayor, like I asked?"

She turned from the computer screen and smiled brightly in response. "Of course, sir."

Chang nodded and moved back into his office, oblivious to the way that his secretary scowled at him as soon as his back was turned. Like she would forget to do the one thing that he'd actually trusted her with. The young councilman was positively anal about taking all of his calls personally, which left her with very little to do except push paperwork around her desk and play solitaire.

The call connected just as the door slammed shut behind him, interrupting the secretary's self-righteous scowl.

"_Y'ello_?"

"Frank?"

Chang heard something crash on the other side of the phone, like Frank had just abruptly pulled his feet off a desk and taken a lamp with them, or something. One dark eye twitched in barely contained annoyance.

"_Sir_?"

"I suppose I don't have to ask if you're still out at the mansion."

There was a long pause, as Frank tried to determine what sort of answer would get him in the least amount of trouble. "_Well…" _

"As long as everything is in place by this evening it hardly matters to me where you are," Chang interrupted. He picked up a photo frame from his immaculate desk, his mouth quirking at the image of his son, caught in a one-fisted yawn. He put the photo back down and his voice hardened. "Everything _will_ be in place by this evening, won't it, Frank?"

"_Ahhh, of course, sir-_"

On his side of the line, Frank vaguely wondered if driving up to Seattle, getting all the thugs into position, and waiting until nightfall could count as 'overtime.' He scratched the top of his head nervously; he wasn't stupid enough to actually ask, especially when his employer had already started talking.

"I'll be out at the docks by nine tonight. Try not to let those brainless guerillas you hired do anything stupid until I get there."

"_Of course, sir-"_

But Jimmy Chang had already hung up the phone.

Frank scowled at the phone still in his hand. "That _I_ hired?" He sighed, snapping the cell phone shut and tossing it on the desk. He turned back to the computer monitor, ignoring the lamp, still on the floor. The almost middle-aged man stared hard at the monitor's glowing face for a long moment, reached out, and started moving the mouse absentmindedly. He sighed. "I really, _really_ need a new job." It was practically becoming his mantra.

* * *

"Stop breathing in my ear, you're bothering me." Jeri turned to frown at Max. "If you're so wound up, why don't you go meditate or something. Say a mantra. _Anything_; I don't care, just let me finish. I'm almost done."

Max scowled and pulled away. Logan was still shoving down the sleeve of his shirt, covering the prick in the crook of his elbow. He'd shoved it back up, again, to frown at the bruising there. Sometimes he got the feeling that Jeri had it in for him; especially the way she'd so gleefully shoved the needle into his skin. As soon as his sleeve was down, brushing his wrist once more, he turned to smile calmingly at Max, who had begun to pace in the small examination room. The small digital clock next to Jeri told him that it was just now turning 10:30. He'd been here for almost an hour; it hadn't taken him much more than half an hour to get here, and even less than that for Jeri to collect the five vials of blood she'd wanted. Really, she'd almost pounced on him as soon as he'd walked through the door. The women had practically had the needle in hand. Maybe she just really wanted to know what was going on... maybe that's why she'd been so... enthusiastic.

"If nothing else," Logan said wryly, having had the situation angrily explained to him by Max while Jeri had been siphoning off his blood, "at least we know that breathing the same air as you won't kill me."

"Great," Max snarled, "But for all we know, I could be passing this stupid virus to every person I meet."

"We don't know anything yet, Max." Logan replied reassuringly.

Is it bad, that as sad as it was, as detrimental as it had been to their physical relationship, the existence of the virus was one of the few things that really connected him to her? He felt more in control of the situation when they had the common bond of the virus to worry about. He kind of liked being able to reassure her that, one day, they would get through this, that they had something to look forward to. Not to say that the virus wasn't horrible and he hated it, because he did, with every fiber of his being, but at the same time it had also become one of the things that bound them together.

"Good news," Jeri pushed away from the microscope, having finished combining some of Max's blood with her first sample from Logan. "The virus is still chugging away at 100% efficiency." She smiled, almost delighted. "It's slowly and merrily ripping all of Logan's blood cells to shreds; it's actually kind of fascinating to watch-"

Jericho trailed off, realizing that Logan and Max were looking at her a little strangely.

"How is that good news?" Max demanded, having stopped mid-pace to stare in amazement at the medic.

The brunette blinked. And then, "Oh, sorry! I figured you'd take it as good news that it wasn't, like, twice as effective or something." Twice as effective? Dead was still dead, in Max's book, until she realized that twice as effective meant that if she accidentally touched Logan, he could have been dead in fifteen minutes or less, instead of thirty, which seriously cut down on the amount of time she could pump him full of another transgenic's life-saving blood. Max sighed, remembering the good ole' days when she'd had hours before she had to worry about Logan succumbing to the virus; seemed like every time they touched, that window to save him through a blood transfusion got smaller. Not that even that would be effective forever, if what Jeri thought was true. Still-

"So what does it mean?" Her arms folded under her breasts, her face twisted in unhappiness. Logan offered her a comforting smile, but she ignored it.

"Well, I need to run some more tests; splice some virus DNA, see if it's the same length as before, make sure that the virus reacts the same way with _all_ of Logan's blood samples…" Jeri shrugged. "But to be honest, I'd say that it's probably unlikely that it was a mutation after all."

Logan and Max shared a glance. Did that mean…

Jeri nodded, answering their unspoken question. "I think your body really did find a way to stunt the growth of the virus."

Max's eyes widened, just as Logan was demanding out loud, "Does that mean-"

"Yes, Logan," Jeri turned to the older man, but kept her voice very neutral, as if to impart that it wasn't as awesome a gain as he was probably thinking. "That means that in another two years, there's a very, _very_ small chance that Max's body will have rendered the virus ineffective."

Logan turned to look at Max, his face widening into a smile-

But Jeri was continuing, insistently. "But, seriously. Really small. Not for certain. And _months_ from now. Not tomorrow. Months. Maybe even years."

Max was still frozen. Years? _Years_?! Logan sighed, oblivious to Max's stricken face as he turned back to Jericho. "Still," Logan frowned. "I suppose it's better than what we could have found out, right Max?" Logan turned back to Max, but she had already pushed out of the spotless exam room. "Max?"

"Max!" She heard the door open behind her, but she kept walking down the long, white-washed and brightly lit corridor. Logan's voice from behind became annoyed. "Max, will you _wait_ a second."

She stopped abruptly, turning to face him as he caught up with her. "_What_?"

He frowned pensively, staring at her through his thin-rimmed glasses. "This isn't as bad as you think."

"Were you not listening back there?" Max demanded, gesturing back down the hallway. "Years, Logan. She said _years_."

"Yeah," Logan replied, still slightly annoyed. "And what's a few more months, _maybe_ years, when we've already been waiting a year and a half?"

"What's a few more years?" She bit back in amazement. _What's a few more years?!_ She couldn't _last_ two more years!

... God, she didn't even know if she could last two more days.

Logan sighed, part of him kind of wishing he could reach out and grab her shoulders, force her to stare deeply into his eyes and feel the force of his conviction. "Max, you know I'll wait for you."

It wasn't him waiting for her that she was concerned about. Her eyes searched his, just for a moment. The words gathered force in her throat. "Logan, I…" She tried to hold them back, but the words tumbled out, rushed out, in a pained whisper before she could suppress them. "I don't think I can do this anymore."

Logan started, surprised. And then purposefully misunderstood. "You don't want to fight about this anymore?"

Max sighed. "Logan-"

Logan didn't back down. He never did. Sometimes she thought her relationship with Alec was cyclic… well, that was nothing when compared to her relationship with Logan. "I don't want to argue about this again, Max."

Well, didn't she get a say, too? Why did he get to decide? She opened her mouth, tried again. "Logan…"

"Remember what I said yesterday?" Logan searched her eyes and softened his voice. "Sometimes we just need to work a little bit harder… right?" When she didn't immediately respond, merely looked away in guilt, he added, "That's why we're having dinner tomorrow night, remember? It'll give us a chance to reconnect, remind us of what's important." She still wouldn't say anything, so he prompted again, "Right?"

Max looked off to the side for a long moment, her mouth set in a moue of unhappiness. "…Right," She finally managed, in a soft voice. Oddly enough, for one long moment, she missed Alec.

"Good," Logan smiled warmly in response. Then continued, in a sure voice, trying to lighten the atmosphere, "Are you hungry? I figured while I'm here, and it's so close to lunchtime…"

But Max didn't feel like it, and it showed in every unhappy line of her hunched shoulders and browbeaten body.

"I gotta get back to work," Max muttered, still unable to look at her boyfriend.

So he'd won, but the victory still felt a bit empty, the way she was leaving. "I'll see you tonight then? 8 o'clock?"

"Of course," Max nodded, turned, and started her walk out of the Med Group. Once the single, heavy door closed behind her, and her foot hit cement… well, she just had to get away from here… Now. She started off at jog, heading back towards Command, and by the time she was at the end of the street, she was practically at a full-out run.

Logan stood here in the hallway for a few moments, staring at the door she'd left through. Jeri, who'd been coming out of the examination room to hunt down some snacks and had caught the tail-end of the conversation, turned around and headed back into the room. She suddenly felt the need to watch more of Logan's blood cells be brutally destroyed. Snacks could wait.

* * *

A few blocks away, snacks were of vital importance.

"Hey, you… kid."

The X-6 stopped in the hallway, turning to stare at Alec with a wide-eyed _'who, me?_' expression.

Alec had his arms folded across his chest, his eyes trying to impart the seriousness of the mission. "Go to mess, grab a couple of waters and a few ho-ho's and run them out to Carter, will you? He's in the Eastern Sector, near the back-up entrance."

The X-6 took off immediately, probably glad of something to do. Alec shook his head and turned back to Luke. "Anything else?"

"No, that was about it."

Alec sighed in annoyance. "How many times I got to tell you, Luke? When Carter calls in to request a snack run, tell him to buzz off. That frequency is for emergencies only."

"He said it _was_ an emergency!" Luke defended. Alec rolled his eyes, because Luke was just too nice of a guy.

"An emergency request for ho-ho's? That hardly qualifies as-" Alec's eyes focused past Luke's head. And widened.

"Hey," Marcy said softly. Luke started and turned to gaze at the short red-headed woman that had snuck up behind him. Well, not so much 'snuck' up, as 'walked quietly up while both men had been distracted.'

So sneaky.

Luke frowned and opened his mouth, but he felt a sudden rush of air behind his back. He turned to find that Alec was moving rapidly back towards Max's office, regardless of the fact that he was being kind of rude.

"Alec!" Marcy huffed.

Luke turned wide eyes back to Marcy once more as Alec froze in his steps. Maybe this would be a good time to just, you know… Luke booked it out of there before he could get caught in the cross-fire.

"We really need to talk," Marcy finished, when Alec winced and turned to look at her. He shifted and adjusted his collar, almost in discomfort.

"Marcy…" Alec laughed uncomfortably. "Heh… Wheeen'd you get here?"

"About an hour ago." She said flatly. "I heard you were here, but the office door was locked."

He knew, because he'd locked it, and when she'd tried to turn the handle, he'd sat very, very still, and hadn't made a sound. "Really? Weird, must be broken."

Marcy sighed in annoyance, and repeated in that little girl's voice, "Alec, I'm serious, we need to talk."

Alec finally gave up, and then he too sighed. "Marcy, there's really nothin' to say-"

"I get it, you know?" Marcy interrupted, her emerald green eyes sliding up to meet his.

Alec's mouth snapped shut. He glared at her in confusion; was this some kind of trick? "Get… what?" He asked grudgingly, his interest piqued.

"I'm not stupid. I know the way I acted when I was fighting with Janna… Well… I know." She looked away from him, full lips pursing together in embarassment.

Alec was still watching her in suspicion. "Is this your way of apologizing?" He hoped she wasn't, he didn't have it in him to be mean to her to begin with, but this could make everything that much more diffic-

"Yes," She looked at him once more, and nodded, her curly red hair swaying around her full, sad face. "I'm sorry about how I acted."

Ah, crap.

"Well… thanks." Alec tried to turn on his heel, tried to get the hell out of there, before he could remember that she was one of the nicest people he knew, and there was something wrong with him because he had strictly been interested in her for her cutesy physical appearance. He didn't want to be reminded that everyone was always saying that Marcy was the type of girl you should settle down with. He didn't want to restart the guilt and reconsider dating her for no other reason than the fact that it was the thing that he _should_ do.

"Wait!"

Please just let me go back to the office, he begged her mentally, before steeling himself and facing her fully once more. "Yeah?" He asked, sounding way more nonchalant that he really was.

"This thing with you and Max…"

Oh come on, not even she could be so nice as to say something like 'hope it works out' or something similarly sappy-

But Marcy surprised him when her eyes narrowed, her tone strengthened, and she continued. "The thing is, I thought Max was dating Logan."

That was unexpected. "Uhhhh-"

"And I know that you two are friends, but I had no idea that there was even a hint of anything like that between the two of you."

Alec shifted from one foot to the other. "Well, I wouldn't say there was _nothing_-"

"In fact," Marcy continued, tapping her lips in thought. "I've kind of been wondering if this whole thing-"

Alec cut her off gently before she could finish the thought, and he answered her with as much honesty as he could. "Regardless of what you think, Max did claim me. And anything you could say right now, it's just opening yourself up for trouble."

Marcy's head cocked to the side. "It's pretty unstable?" Huh. If the claim was _really _unstable, that must mean Alec was almost equal to Max. Which meant that he was actually more alpha than either she or Janna were. Which meant he could have told either of them no at any point, and they would have had no choice but to accept it…

So, what, was he just a big coward then?

Well, actually, come to think of, if it'd just been Alec that had said no, there was no way Janna would have shoved off. Alpha females were a little strong-blooded like that. And so long as Janna had her clutches on him, Marcy wouldn't have given up, either. Maybe the only way Alec had been able to shake Janna was by throwing a more dominant female in the mix. But now that Janna was out of the picture… "Alec-" Marcy started to say, but frowned when she realized that it had come out in stereo sound… She'd said it the exact same time as Peta, on the opposite end of the hallway.

Alec turned to the night model near the training entrance. "I need to talk to you," Peta said blandly, her eyes offering him a healthy dose of '_this is me, saving your butt_.'

"Right, well…" He glanced at Marcy. And for the second time that day, though the smile was more strained, he heard himself say, "Good talk." He ambled off, maybe moving a little _too_ quickly to really call it an amble, down the hallway towards Peta, who was busy tapping her foot in impatience. Marcy watched for only a moment before turning and walking away, the gears in her head spinning at lightning speed.

As soon as Alec got close enough, Peta snagged him by the ear and pulled him into the training room. "Ow!" Alec ripped away. "What the hell!"

"What, are you crazy?" Peta demanded. "Do you not remember that you just had one of your best friends bite you for the sole purpose of getting that girl's talons out of you?"

"She was apologizing," Alec defended, rubbing his ear in annoyance.

"For what? Spending copious amounts of time in bed with you?"

"For how crazy everything got," Alec frowned in response, his hand dropping back to his side.

Peta just shook her head, the hair in her high ponytail swishing back and forth. "The girl has an agenda."

"Who, Marcy?" Alec laughed. Yeah right. "Marcy is probably _the_ nicest person I know."

Peta eyed him for a long moment before responding gently. "That doesn't mean you have to like her, Alec."

Alec ignored her, turning to look at the transgenics, mostly X-5's, a few X-4's, and even a few transhumans, warming up on the mats. Changing the subject usually worked pretty well for him, so he didn't think this time would be any exception. "Everyone here, then?"

Peta turned, her gaze becoming sharp and critical, not that she had completely given up on this subject with Alec; she would just have to revisit it later. "Almost everybody. Still waiting on a few stragglers."

Alec frowned, his eyes sweeping across the room. "So which one is he?"

Peta pretended obliviousness, her keen eyes still scanning the various forms and stretches as the transgenics warmed up. "Which one is who?"

"Don't think you can try and play all insightful with me and then turn around and pretend ignorance about your own life," Alec warned. "We both know who I'm talking about."

Peta scowled, glancing at her friend out of the corner of her eye. She said, extremely grudgingly, "He's the one in the back corner, stretching his calf against the wall." Alec followed her gaze to the man leaning near some crates, his foot held against the wall as he leaned in and stretched the muscles on the back of his leg. Alec frowned.

This, then, was the infamous Jay.

"Huh."

"Huh? Huh, what?" Peta turned to frown at him in suspicion.

"The way you described him I expected him to be more… I dunno… more Neanderthal lookin'."

Neanderthal was generally Peta's favorite term when used to describe Jay.

Even though Jay was an average-sized X-5, 5'11 or so, with a thin, athletic build and a fairly attractive face.

"The guy looks more like a soccer player than a Neanderthal," Alec pointed out.

"Right," Peta scowled. "Just like Logan is more of an intelligent human being than he is a 'stupid Ordinary.'"

Ah crap, even she had heard about that?

"What's that supposed to mean?" Alec frowned.

"You figure it out." Peta sniffed, flouncing off.

Alec stared after her for a moment before shrugging. Eh. Women. He had accepted long ago that he might like them, and he might get a few insights here and there (certainly more than his friend Sketchy would ever get), but he would probably never _really_ understand them. And that was only solidified when he headed back to Max's office, only to find that she had slipped in while he'd been in the training room, and she was sitting at her desk, head buried in her hands.

He had a feeling that this was definitely one of the times that Max would prefer to be left alone. So naturally he shut the door gently behind him. She looked up, her eyes rimmed with red and trouble. She opened her mouth-

"Yeah, yeah, you'd rather be alone," Alec frowned, his arms folding across his chest. "Well maybe I'd rather be with you." Her mouth snapped shut and she stared at him for a long moment before finally looking away, slouching back into her chair, eyes closing in weariness.

Alec crossed the distance, came around the desk and perched on its corner, near her. He had a feeling he knew what this was about. "So, what's up with the virus?"

"You gonna congratulate me?" She asked bitterly. Alec's head cocked in question, not that she could see it. Well, she could, because her eyes popped open, she sat back up, and said, almost angrily. "I'm cured."

Two words, and the whole world stopped. For a long moment, everything in Alec's head went silent, and the most horrific, unnameable feeling coiled through his stomach; almost like dread, but not quite, a thousand times worse. Wonder what that's about. Alec licked suddenly dry lips, gathered strength, and forced the world to restart. It skipped and stuttered, but finally he heard the beat of his own heart once more. "Well… congratulations." He said weakly. And then, with more surety, even if his voice was a little hard, his eyes a little dark, "When did that happen?"

"Two years from now." Max muttered darkly.

Uhhhhh. What? Alec blinked in confusion. "…Come again?"

Max sighed and leaned over the desk once more, burying her face back into her hands. Her voice was muffled. "Jeri thinks my body is slowly suppressing the virus. And seeing as how it took about a year and half to get this far, it'll probably take that much longer 'til the virus _might _not work anymore."

"Might? You mean, it's not even a definite?"

Max glanced up in surprise at his relieved tone. He scrubbed the expression from his face and affected a look of neutral concern. And then he remembered he was her friend and he wanted her to be happy. He sighed, slouching, as the concern became real and his voice became gentle. "Hey, relax, Max. For all you know, there's a Manticore scientist out there just waiting for the opportunity to work on a cure for you. There's no definite that says you'll be virus-ridden for another two years."

She looked back down, through her hands, towards the desk, her eyes squeezed shut, and her muffled voice was pained. She must not have heard him, or maybe she didn't believe him, because- "I can't do this another two years, Alec." She glanced up at him through unhappy eyes. "I'm _tired_."

Alec froze, torn, as the world slowed once more...

He didn't particularly like when Max gazed at him like the weight of the world was crushing her soul; kind of made him feel like he needed to _do_ something, _anything_... But… As her friend, he naturally wanted to make her feel better. As someone who'd loved and lost- hadn't it only been two days ago, maybe more, the days were all bleeding together, that he'd reminded her that she was a danger to Logan? Alec stood from the desk and came down to a crouch, swiveling her chair to face him. He thought for a long moment, trying to come up with the least hypocritical and most comforting statement he could while she looked at him with expectant eyes; like somehow, he could help fix this. Finally, he just settled for the most generic honesty he could think of, his hands coming to rest on her knees.

"Max, Logan will always love you." Max's face started to fall, but Alec continued. "And I will always be your friend. So whatever it is that you decide…" He trailed off, unsure of how to continue. Whatever she decided, what? They'd both understand? Not likely. If Max's future didn't come with a spot on a pedestal for Logan, the older man was sure to throw a fit. If Max did continue with Logan, well… Alec would always be halfway convinced that she'd made the wrong decision… So what could he settle on? She'd never be alone? Because she'd always have him? He didn't know if he wanted to put himself that far out there.

Max watched him struggle for words for a long moment, and finally her hand came up, glanced across his forehead, brushing stray hair away. Alec glanced up at her, solemn. "You cleaned off the mark." She said softly, offering him a way out.

The corner of his mouth lifted. "Yeah, well, got tired of everyone bringing it up."

They stared at each other for a long moment… and then finally Max cleared her throat, pulling her hand away and looking away as well. "Don't know why I'm freaking out anyway," Max started, and Alec took that as his cue to remove his hands from her knees. "I'm sure after tomorrow everything will be fine."

Alec smiled in question, one eyebrow arching as his head cocked to the side. "Tomorrow? What happens tomorrow?"

Honesty is the best policy, right? Then why did Max want to lie, lie, lie? She admitted, grudgingly, "Logan and I are going to have a date night. Maybe it'll fix all this-" She trailed off, because Alec had sprung back to his feet, and was moving away from her, agitated. "Alec?"

"It's nothing." It never was nothing. He shoved a hand roughly through his hair, resisted the urge to pace the length of the room. His voice couldn't be controlled though, and it was almost scathing. "I'm sure spaghetti with Logan will be magical. I'm sure it'll fix all your problems." He made for the door-

"Alec, don't be like this-"

He glanced at her blankly over one shoulder. He could have thrown out a 'be like what' be even he recognized there was no hiding how spun he was. Well, if all else fails, blame the claim. "I just… With everything that's goin' on, I just can't deal with this right now, Max." He looked away from her, stared hard at the doorknob his hand was resting on. "I'll see you tonight."

"Fine," She replied, surprising him. A part of him had expected her to blow up in anger; in reality, she still sounded a little lost. "8 o'clock?"

"Like it ever changes," Alec rolled his eyes before yanking open the door. It fell shut behind him, hitting the frame hard enough that it disguised the sound of Max's head, hitting her desktop.

When was this going to get easy?

* * *

Terminal City was a bit of a strange sub-pocket in space, capable of warping time like nothing else. Some days just dragged, dragged, dragged, no matter how busy Alec was. And then some days, like today, well, they were over in a blink of an eye, leaving him to wonder, 'what the hell did I do all day?' It wouldn't have been so bad, but now that meant he had to haul ass to make it to Logan's on time…

Not to say, however, that he'd done _nothing_ all day. After his little run in with Max, he'd hot-footed it over to Oak Street, a small part of him almost hoping that someone would start some shit, that he could use it as an excuse to work out all the uncertainty and rage that was snaking through his system. Annoyingly enough, everyone was keepin' their heads down, throwin' him wary glances out of the corner of their eyes. Like anyone would start anything after what had happened to Jones, that muscle-bound idiot that had tried to throw a punch at Max and had gotten intercepted by Alec instead.

Then Alec's annoyance had started to stutter and stop, because somebody had sidled up and asked if everything was okay between him n' Max.

Abruptly he'd remembered what Max had told him the previous night; that gossip had spread like wildfire, and people were anxious to find out that their chain of command was still intact… which meant that stomping around like a rhinoceros that had gotten rejected during mating season might not be in everyone's best interest. So he'd sighed, put on his 'charming face' and had responded with an, "Of course."

Having to lie about it, having to act like everything was still peachy between him and the woman that had been stupid enough to claim him when he'd been stupid enough to ask... Well, it'd made it all worse, somehow.

He'd headed back to Command after that, slipped past Max's silent office, and had all but thrown himself into working with the night models. Peta had taken one look at his face and very deviously paired him up with Jay. As it turns out, Jay was less of a soccer player and more of a ninja; the guy was quick, extremely so. He'd managed to avoid most of the punches that Alec threw at him; not to say that Alec didn't put the guy down on the mat once or twice, much to Peta's carefully concealed, narrow-eyed delight. Jay only got one good hit in in a moment of distraction. By the time the match was done, Alec was pleasantly worn out and finally free from all the uncertainty that the so-called 'fight' with Brock and talk with Max, had filled him with.

Well, so much for that, because as soon as he'd pulled up to Sandeman's house and saw Max's bike already parked out front, there it was again.

Sometime, it just wasn't even fair that you couldn't punch whomever you wanted in the face. Especially when Alec opened the door, stepped into the living room, and Logan looked up with a frown.

"You're late."

"By two minutes." Alec's voice was hard, which was slightly unusual for him, and it made Logan start in surprise. Alec usually saved his anger and frustration for alone-time with Max or Joshua; the rest of the world was more accustomed to his snark.

Max, leaning against a bookcase, frowned at his tone, and looked away, troubled. Logan turned to attempt to share a glance with her, but she didn't return it, instead schooling her face back into neutrality and letting her arms fold across her chest once more.

Guess it'd been too much to hope the Alec had calmed down by now. Not that the rest of her own day had gone so swimmingly, either. She'd all but hidden in her office, hoping to avoid any more scenes with Alec... She had practically felt it when he'd stomped back into Command, she could feel his presence in every single cell of her body. So when he'd stormed by her door, she'd sat very, very still, and hadn't made a sound. She'd snuck out later, thinkin' maybe she could work with the other night models and work out some of this animal uncertainty... But she n' Alec were more alike than she sometimes figured, because he was already in there, wailing on a good-looking, shark-DNA-carrying transgenic. From the way Peta was smiling, all wide-eyed and blood-thirsty, undoubtedly Alec was sparring with Jay. Alec had tensed when she walked in the door, but she didn't think he'd really noticed her... And before he could get a chance to turn and check the room, Jay had used Alec's distraction to land a solid blow to the taller man's stomach. Max had winced, and booked it out of there.

Not that it mattered, because here they were again. Together. Alone.

Well... alone except for Logan, who seemed oblivious to the way that Max and Alec were now staring at each other.

"Well, here's what we got," Logan's voice seemed loud, fairly thundering through the room. The two transgenics started and looked away from one another.

Logan started going over the details of the mission, and Alec and Max did their best to pay attention, their best to keep their sidelong glances at each other to a minimum. They must have succeeded, or Logan was really on a roll, because they left there with Logan fairly convinced that they understand all the particulars of the assignment and that everything, while not normal, was considerably better than what it had been earlier in the day when Max had walked away from him.

Alec lowered himself onto the Bandit. "Peir 7, then?" He looked away from Max, who was busy adjusting the dark riding gloves on her hands.

She didn't ask if they should just take one bike to the docks. Seemed like kind of a moot point. She made a soft noise of agreement in her back throat, "Mmhmm," using her dark leather gloves as an excuse to not look at him.

"And what are we looking for?"

Max looked up sharply at him. "What? Weren't you paying attention?"

"Not really," Alec shrugged, because it was the truth. "Were you?"

Max had been ignoring Logan's long drawn out mission briefs since they'd first started working together, over two years ago. She had always been more about the action than she was about the planning. But she wasn't going to admit that to Alec. "Of course," She scowled. "We're looking for anything shady. Logan doesn't really know what."

He nodded, and gunned the motor. Maybe any other day he would have used her statement as an opening to poke fun at the older man, but tonight he squashed it. Anything he could say about Logan, he knew he wouldn't be able to hide the bitterness. He went for something safe, instead, and spoke over the sudden roar of the engine, "See you over there."

She almost wanted to call him back. She almost wanted to say 'screw the mission, we need to talk this bitch out.' She almost did a lot of things. In the end, she watched him ride away and wondered when she'd become such a coward… Or maybe she'd always been a coward when it came to relationships, and this week was just doing a really effective job at pointing that out to her once more.

Max got on her own bike, and followed the tail-light of the Bandit through darkness. The wind whipping around her hair, the streetlights rushing by... rather than stirring the tulmultuous thoughts, the roaring silence calmed them. It was almost… relaxing… It'd been a while since she'd just had a chance to ride the streets of Seattle. Sometimes working with Eyes Only had its advantages; sometimes she needed to get out of Terminal City and forget about the war waging on. Max took her duties very seriously, but with everything on her plate, she always felt herself tip-toeing that edge of reason; that point where everything becomes too much and you just want to huddle in a corner and tell everyone to fuck off. Her Ninja always took the edge off, and tonight there seemed to be no difference.

And maybe Alec had caught some of that lightening of spirit, because by the time they'd reached the docks, they were practically racing. And when she turned off the bike and turned to look at him over her shoulder, she'd _so_ won, his eyes crinkled with the smile. It was like a punch to the gut, stopping her breath, and it came backed with a need to go over there, lower herself backwards onto his bike, onto his lap, angle his mouth up to meet hers, and-

Alec's hand waving in front of her face startled her from the thought. She wondered when he'd gotten off his bike. "You still here with me, Max?"

She cleared her throat, glancing away, her face heating. "Yeah," She muttered, and blamed her overactive imagination on the unconsummated claim… and the amount of time it'd been since the last time she'd-

Max's eyes went unfocused once more, and Alec eyed her pink cheeks in almost amusement. "Are you sure?"

Her gaze snapped back to him once more, and her voice was almost waspish. "I said yeah, didn't I?"

The warmth in Alec's gaze faded back to hardness, and she almost regretted her prickly response when he scowled. "Whatever," He muttered, turning away from her. "Let's just get this over with." He walked away from her, disappearing into the dark shadows of the back buildings they'd hidden their bikes behind.

Max stared after him for only a moment before making herself get off the Ninja and head off into another situation that always seemed to earn her Alec's annoyance, but never enough of Logan's appreciation, given the way in which she always busted her ass.

They skirted through shadows, avoiding the tall lamps lighting the pier and the side of the large warehouse, the spot lights that illuminated the large, faded brown lettering that declared the building to be Pier 7 and their destination.

"Check it out," Alec said out of the corner of his mouth, forgetting his annoyance for one moment so he could gesture at a building a few loading areas down. "See that warehouse; that's where I got shot trying to rescue your damn mermaid."

"I remember," She shook her head, still hugging to the side of the building. Transgenic, after all, so how could she forget? "Try not to let it happen again."

Her biting voice almost made him smile. "Gee, Max, you almost sound like you care."

She ignored him, peering down the long, lit dock instead, taking in the dark, empty waters next to it. "Alec, you notice anything a little funny?"

"You mean like the fact that there's no ship and no workers busily unloading whatever it is we're supposed to be looking for?" Alec replied blandly. "Yeah, I did catch that."

They shared a glance.

"Trap?"

"Maybe we're just late," Max shrugged. "Or maybe the boat is late."

They mulled it over for another moment.

"Trap?" Alec repeated.

"Probably," Max nodded. "They musta found the bugs we planted. Lemme borrow your cell phone."

Alec dug into his jeans, offering her up his phone. She glanced at it, it hadn't been on silent, and after turning the ringer off she offered him an annoyed glance. He just shrugged, so she let it go and punched in the familiar numbers. Alec wondered why she bothered calling the man; Logan would want them to go in and poke around anyway. More than that, he was really glad she hadn't gone through his contact list and seen what he'd named Logan.

"You can't be sure, Max." Logan insisted. "The boat might be late."

Alec must have heard the older man's voice over the line, because he snorted. Max elbowed him, keeping her attention focused on the conversation through the phone. "They could have found the bugs we planted, Logan. We could be walking right into a trap."

Logan's sigh filled her ear. "Max, you know your safety is the most important thing to me-"

"But you think the boat is just late." Max interrupted in annoyance. She tried to control the huff of irritation. "Fine, we'll go in and take a look around."

"Hit me back if you find anything." Logan frowned. And then, like always, "Max, be care-"

Max flipped the phone shut, holding it out to Alec. He eyed her. "A little passive-aggressive, much?" He took the phone from her, and she ignored his statement. Alec couldn't contain it though. He smirked. "You ever find it funny that Logan is always telling you to be careful when he's the one sending you into dangerous situations in the first place?"

Max stepped carefully around him, still hugging to the shadows. "Please don't start, Alec."

Alec shrugged, his whisper close behind her in the darkness. "I was just sayin-"

"Well, don't." She hissed back. They hit a ladder that led to the roof soon after that, so Alec didn't get to throw anything back. They always seemed to do that; fighting was okay up to a point, but once everything really started happening, they put on their game faces and just focused on taking care of the mission. They could always argue later; when they were in the thick of it, they preferred to concentrate on making sure there _was_ a later. Also, Alec tried not to look up, to watch Max's ass as she climbed the ladder before him.

The roof was empty, and the door that led into the top level of the warehouse was locked with a padlock and heavy rusted chains that probably hadn't been touched in years. They shared a glance. They were strong, but neither of them qualified as Superman.

"I'll find a broken window," Max rolled her eyes.

"Which leaves me to check the other side of the roof for another door." Alec replied in answering annoyance. Splitting up was never on their list of favorite things to do, but they also preferred to get these things done as quickly as possible; they had T.C. to think of, they couldn't spend all night out here.

They started to move away from each other, and Max's quick, "Hey," made Alec stop in his tracks and glance back at her in question. It was grudging, like it usually was after a fight. Still, it was like she couldn't resist. "…Be careful."

He shot her a quick smile, and even though they were bouncing rapidly back and forth between friends and foes, he offered her a reassuring, "Always." A quick nod, and she was moving away from him.

It was probably only about five minutes later that Max pulled herself through the window that had probably been cracked open since the Pulse, at least if the rust and grime that was flaking off onto her gloves was any indication. She peered around the dark room, her hair swinging around her face. It was nothing but an old office, white sheets draped over everything. A small part of her wondered if she could come back later and score a better chair for her own office, but she silenced that voice and focused on more important things; that is, hooking back up with Alec who was also undoubtedly in the building by now. She pulled herself the rest of the way through, her feet hit the floor, silently, and she took one more precautionary glance around the room. Nothin'. She lifted herself to a ready crouch and started creeping through darkness.

She opened the door slowly, and peered down an equally empty hallway. Maybe Logan had been wrong about the shipment altogether; maybe tonight was a total bust and not a trap like they'd first thought. Wouldn't _that_ be a pain in the ass. Max vaguely hoped that Alec was havin' more luck than her.

* * *

"Drop it," The man said warningly. Alec sighed, putting on the safety, lowering the gun that he'd relieved from another guard only moments ago slowly to the ground. He came back up with his hands in the air. Well. Here's hoping Max was having better luck than him. This place was crawling with creeps. He'd had to put three down as soon as he'd walked through the door he'd found on the far end of the building, and then two more on the catwalk as he'd been makin' his way to the ground floor. And had he mentioned that sometimes he really disliked Logan? He rolled his eyes in annoyance, ignoring the guard's angry questions, and shot forward.

* * *

Max startled as the familiar pop of gunfire split the heavy silence and her breath caught as she whirled, peering down the long corridor.

_Alec_.

She didn't even hesitate. It's not that Alec couldn't take care of himself… it's just that Alec couldn't take care of himself. She took off running down the hallway, headed towards the sound of the gunshot.

She found a set of stairs behind the door at the end of the hallway; a stairwell leading both up to the roof and down to another doorway on the second floor. This, then, was definitely the way Alec had come. She followed the trail of unconscious bodies, stepping gingerly around them with a frown. She pushed through the door at the bottom of the stairs and found another two bodies on the catwalk that led to the ground floor.

Holy crap, this place was _crawling _with guards. Max thought, not for the first time, that Alec just had some kind of plain, old-fashioned bad luck. Figures he'd be the one that found the route teeming with fire power.

And more than that, she was really going to have to have a talk with Logan about his powers of intel gathering. He seemed to be slipping as of late. It seemed like everything he'd given her on Jimmy Chang so far had been wrong; she was tempted to scrap helpin' him on this case altogether. And then Alec's voice caught her ear, and her thoughts silenced. She fell to a crouch, and peered under the scaffolding's hand-railing, her sharp eyes rapidly scanning the large open area beneath her.

There they were, near some large, stacked wooden crates.

"C'mon, guys, can't we all just get along," Alec's hands were in the air, and he was surrounded by men in dark suits with guns and didn't this just figure. Normal Max tactics involved just blazing in there and somehow, someway, avoiding all bullets and kicking everyone's ass…

But a safety clicked off and cold metal pressed into the back of her neck, through her long hair.

"Don't move."

Before she'd registered that it was a bad idea, she whirled around, her face tight. She only had a moment to glance up into obsidian eyes before the man lifted his arm into the air and the gun smashed powerfully against the side of her face.

She crumpled to the metal catwalk, unconscious.

And for a moment, Jimmy Chang let himself smile. Sometimes, it was all just so easy.

_

* * *

_

Alec was shoved into the small room, and turned in time to catch Max's limp body in his arms. He glared at Jimmy Chang, his mouth operating angrily on its own. "Congratulations, pal. You're just another fine example of everything that's wrong with America."

Chang eyed him with humorless, dark eyes. And finally he smirked a little bit. "I could say the same thing to you, trannie freak." The heavy door slammed on Alec's hard face, he heard a lock click into place and Chang's hard voice barking at the thug in the hallway to, 'watch them.' Alec sighed, shifting Max in his arms, and took a moment to glance around the room. The quick inventory of his surroundings offered him very little, and it's not like he could really consider escaping yet. He wasn't goin' anywhere anytime soon, especially with Max still out of it. He placed Max on the floor gently, lowering himself to sit beside her. He would wait for her to snap out of it; really, he didn't have much say in the matter.

It only took about ten minutes for her to start stirring, to start trying to shake off unconsciousness. And then a warm hand was patting her cheek, drawing her back into reality, and she frowned slightly. Her eyes opened slowly, and she made a soft sound of protest in the back of her throat, her hand coming up to press against the side of her temple. She winced as her fingers pressed against delicate, bruising flesh.

Well didn't that just frickin' figure. This was so not her week.

Alec relaxed, drawing away. "Awake now?"

"What happened?" She grunted, struggling to sit up, her palm against her head. His hand grasped at her arm and he helped her the rest of the way up, helping her to lean gingerly back into the wall.

"Don't know," He muttered. "I was fixing to get my ass shot up when Mr. Jimmy Chang himself showed up, pressing a gun to your very unmoving head." Even remembering it now, his heart jumped to his throat and he forced himself to remain calm. Seeing her dumped on the ground, like so much useless garbage, it had made the entire world stand still; it had made him feel... well, as the strength of the rage came pouring back, it had made him feel almost inhuman.

"Jimmy Chang knocked me out?" Max demanded, oblivious to Alec's narrowed, angry eyes. How embarrassing. For an Ordinary, the guy hit like a mack-truck. Didn't help that he'd managed to hit her in the exact right place on her temple. She'd probably have to deal with a migraine for the rest of the night. Her hand dropped away from her head.

Alec frowned at the deep red of her temple and forced himself into calmness. It would bruise eventually, leave a nice little shiner for the world to see. And one thing was for certain, he didn't have it in him to be mad at her anymore; not after seeing her slumped in unconsciousness.

But he couldn't resist throwing out a teasing, "Want me to kiss it, make it better?"

"Idiot," She murmured, barely paying him any attention as she glanced across the small, stark room. Her voice was almost tired; maybe it was the headache, or maybe it was just that she was sick of being in situations like this. "Where the hell are we?"

Small was a word. Tiny was another word. The room had one light source, a suspended, swaying bulb on an old chain, the walls were bare concrete, no windows, and the empty space barely had enough room for them to sit side by side, given the empty shelving that hugged either side of the walls.

"Some kind of unused supply closet," Alec shrugged, his shoulders moving against the wall at his back. "One guard outside the door from the sound of it. One guard with more than one gun." Alec upgraded his sentiments; he really, _really_ disliked Logan right now.

"Are you getting the feeling that we were right and there is no shipment?" Max muttered in annoyance, leaning back into the wall, drawing her knees up to her chest. She could feel his shoulder brush against her own. The heat of his body somehow managed to make it through both of their layers of clothing and sizzle through her own skin.

"The thought had crossed my mind," He replied dryly, his head lolling against the wall, his eyes shutting gently. He couldn't even call Logan to gloat; the bastards had taken his phone.

* * *

"So, what do we do with them?" Frank asked from his seated position, breaking out into a sweat. He thought of his daughter. He thought of going home, and looking into young, innocent eyes- He blinked the image away, but he was unable to shake the melancholy.

He hadn't signed up for this. He'd signed up to be the head of security for an up and coming member of government. And then once he'd learned the truth, he was too far in to just graciously back out.

He really, _really_ needed a new job.

But Chang's mind was fast, too fast for Frank, and he was frowning, pacing. "It would be easier to just kill them and dump the bodies in the bay…" Frank shuddered. Chang ignored him, finally stopping and turning to look at his head of security. "I saw the back of the girl's neck. She's definitely one of those transgenics. And I'm almost positive that she _is _the girl that's always on the news."

"Maybe we can just turn them in," Frank piped up hopefully. "There's gotta be some kind of agency in charge of dealing with this kind of thing."

"And how would we do that?" Chang dismissed the man's statement, and his own was scathing in response. "Call the people in charge of transgenic clean up at almost ten o'clock at night, and tell them, 'So sorry to bother you, but I happen to be in a rather shady part of Seattle with a large number of hired guns and, by sheer coincidence, we happen to have some transgenics here. Could you come pick them up please?'" He shot his employee an annoyed look. "I don't think so, Mr. Sturgis."

Frank started. It'd been a long time since he'd heard his own last name. He was more a first-name basis, friendly type of guy. Chang resumed his pacing, his expensive shoes leaving tracks in the thin layer of plaster that coated the ground of this office that had never been finished being refurbished. Just another thing the Pulse had interrupted, another project that the deterioration of the country had let fall into ruin. Frank moodily wondered if the decay in his own life matched that of the building's.

On the desk, near where he was sitting, the screen on the cell phone that they'd taken from the male transgenic lit up. Chang didn't notice. Frank surreptitiously leaned over to check the caller i.d. and vaguely wondered to himself who the hell 'Robo-legs' could be. He sat back up, ramrod straight, when Chang abruptly stopped mid-pace and turned to look at him. The older man, but only by a few years, eyed Frank with a heavy, weighing gaze for one long moment, before abruptly stepping forward and pulling his handgun from the holster on the inside of his well-cut suit. Chang dropped it onto the desk, near the phone, no longer flashing with an incoming call; whoever Robo-legs was, he must have given up. Chang turned to face Frank, pointing at the gun.

"Keep on eye on things here. If they get out, I want you to shoot them."

Frank's gaze followed his boss's pointed finger in horror. And then he frowned, realizing that the phone next to the gun that Chang was pointing at was going off again. Robo-legs was pretty insistent, after all.

He tried to refocus on his boss, wondering if he should bring up the phone. He thought of his daughter's eyes, instead, and asked, "Sir, isn't that something we should leave to-"

"I _said_," Chang repeated in a hard voice, "if they escape, I want you to _kill_ them. If they really do work for Eyes Only, I hardly want them traipsing back there and letting that cyber-hacking _punk_ know we have reason to be worried that he's investigating us."

Frank felt more sweat gather between his tight shoulder blades. "…Of course." He finally forced past dry lips, and looked away from his suddenly very scary employer. What did he expect, the man worked with the mob, for cripes' sake. It probably wouldn't be the first, or last time, that the innocuous Jimmy Chang silenced the opposition.

His boss was oblivious to the wariness within him and loosened his tie, rolling his neck. "I'm going home." Chang sighed. "I've had a long day, and I haven't even had a chance to check on my son." He glanced at Frank once more, and Frank wondered that a man who had just spoken so casually about killing could speak so tenderly about a child. He liked things black and white; this whole grey area with Chang was, well… Frank was beginning to think that the grey area was where everything wrong with the world took place. And least you could put a face on the obvious evil and avoid it. The grey area was where everything really went to shit.

"I'll be back in a few hours," Chang's voice went hard once more. "And we'll have a chat with these transgenics; find out what exactly it is that they know. And if we're lucky, maybe who Eyes Only is, in the process."

From the darkness in his tones, it sounded like it was sure to be an unpleasant conversation. _Can't wait_, Frank blandly thought to himself as the dark man slid his way out of the room. The door of the office slammed shut, and Frank's face became closed off. The transgenic's phone was going off again, and Frank only wondered for a moment who 'Scaly Bastard' was, because his hand went to the inside of his own, vastly less expensive, not nearly as nice, suit. There was no holster there; merely the comforting shape of a disc he'd brought with him from the mansion. In a world of grey, Frank Sturgis, MBA, practically married since high school, father to one daughter with sunshine in her eyes, had found himself longing for something white.

* * *

"I spy, with my little eye… soooomething… white."

It'd been a few hours; Alec was bored out of his mind.

"The speck on the concrete, above the third shelf to the right." Her voice was tired.

"You are so good at this." Alec replied, in the same tired vein, his eyes still closed, his head against the wall at his back.

"…I hate you."

"No, you don't," He replied blandly back, refusing to break the comforting blackness that closed eyelids afforded him. "We've already been over this. When I was pleasantly intoxicated, remember?"

Her head rolled so she could look at him over one shoulder. His head, like hers, was against the wall, the long line of his throat arching backwards. She could just see a hint of teeth, above the high collar of the dark sweater. She looked away quickly. "I really don't feel like hurting you right now," She muttered. "Can we just be quiet until we figure out how to get out of here?"

"If anything, the person you should be thinking of hurting is Logan." Alec replied blandly, before adding, "And we'll get out of here the same way we get out of everything else." He shrugged.

"How's that?"

"We'll wait for an opportunity and we'll wing it. Like always."

Max rolled her eyes. "And you'll get shot, like always. Can you actually try and put a little bit of thought into it, please?"

He smiled, but his eyes remained closed. What, was he trying to take a nap? How obnoxious. His smile widened even further, as if he could sense her aggravation.

"Aww, Maxie, I didn't know you cared."

She muttered, under her breath, "You are so lucky my head doesn't hurt as badly as it should." If the headache had been any worse, she'd have knocked him and his yappy mouth into unconsciousness five minutes ago.

Alec finally opened his eyes and turned to watch her in all seriousness for a moment. Before his eyes crinkled. "Wanna make out?"

Max huffed in annoyance, glancing away.

"Is that a yes?"

"Shut up, Alec."

He ignored her, turning to eye the barrier that kept them from freedom. His lips pursed, just for a second. "Hey!" The bottom of his foot pounded suddenly on the door, startling Max, "I have to use the bathroom."

"Not my problem, pal," Came the muffled, bored reply. "And could you keep it down in there? I'm getting tired of hearing you two flirt like two year olds."

Max gaped. Alec scowled. They shared a glance.

"Whatever happened to thugs that minded their own business?" Alec grumped, relaxing back into the wall once more. Max just eyed him incredulously.

"Did you really think that would work?"

He shrugged. "It was worth a shot…" He eyed her wickedly. "In twenty minutes, I'm coming down with the plague or something, maybe that'll get them in here,"

"Please," Max rolled her eyes. "Like that ever works."

"Also," The guard called out, from the other side of the door, "I can still _hear_ you. Shut _up_, already." There was a grumble after that, that might have been, "I'm trying to read out here," but they weren't sure.

Alec eyed her. She eyed him. His eyes lit, she shook her head in something almost like amusement, and they suddenly knew how the hell they were getting out of this friggin' supply closet. Thank god for big, burly guards with not enough patience and very few brains.

"It wasn't that bad of an idea," Alec frowned, his voice pitching a little higher as he picked a fight. "I suppose you think your sanctified boyfriend would come up with something better."

She gaped in surprise. That was kind of a low blow, especially after the weirdness of the morning. And even though they were only supposed to be pretending to fight for the sole purpose of getting out of here, her eyes narrowed and her mouth twisted. "Where the hell did _that_ come from? And what the hell is it supposed to mean?"

"Oh, I think you know." Alec sniffed in response. "You're always actin' like he can do no wrong… Well, this all his fault in the first place!"

"What are you, five? This isn't anybody's fault, besides Jimmy friggin' Chang's." She hissed back. Her eyes were so narrow, it was almost a squint, and her voice was scathing. "I think _you_ just got a problem with me n' my boyfriend!" She prided herself that she only tripped over the 'b' word slightly.

"Oh, you bet your transgenic _ass_ I do, sister." Alec scowled, and wondered when he'd started to get annoyed, too. Probably when she'd said the 'b' word. "Here it is, another week night, in which I could be doing something _interesting…_ And instead, here I am stuck in _another_ frickin' closet with you!"

Someone pounded lazily on the lower half of the door, as if they'd reached over from a seated position. "Seriously. Two year olds. Shut the hell up."

They ignored him, both too suddenly annoyed to pay much attention to him anyway. The air seemed heavier, somehow. "Like you have something better to do anyway." She scowled. "You cut ties with the only two women on earth that were stupid enough to use you."

He pursed his lips, hazel eyes sparking, and electricity crackled through his body. Like he was so goddamn undesirable. "The only two women on earth? Hardly, Max." His frown deepened, and he looked away from her. Maybe it was only payback for the date she was goin' on with Logan tomorrow night, but he continued angrily, "Besides, I talked to Marcy today-"

All the blood within her body froze, and Max twisted to stare at him in irritation. "You did _what_?!"

He shrugged, his narrow eyes lighting in glee as he eyed her once more, weighing the impact of his words. "Talked to Marcy, and from what she said, I'm thinking she doesn't know that all our ties are cut yet."

On the other side of the door, it had gone deathly silent, as if some latent animal instinct in the guard recognized that something big was going down. He closed the magazine slowly, scooting his chair away from the door.

Rage boiled over, her eyes narrowed, and Max Guevara saw red. "And you encouraged her, I imagine." She sprang to her feet, put distance between them, not very much given how small this closet was, and her hands tightened into fists. She whirled on him, shouting down at him, "Are you stupid?! The whole point of me claiming you was to-"

"What does it even matter?" Alec interrupted harshly, gazing up at her. "The point is, she hasn't given up. Probably because all of T.C. knows that you're too blinded by your sick relationship with Logan-"

Her voice almost rose an octave. "What did you just say to me-"

Alec ignored her, his own voice rising, "-to see what's staring you right in the face! You'll have your magical date night with your stupid Ordinary-"

"You did not just say that _again_!"

But Alec pressed on, finally coming fluidly to his feet, refusing to give her the high ground. "- the week will be over, you'll revoke your claim, and she'll be right back on my tail! And if I had _half_ a brain, I'd do like everyone is always saying I should do and-"

"If you say you'll start dating her, I'll punch you in the face right now!" Max threw back shrilly. "I'm not putting up with all this drama for nothing!"

He towered over her, glaring into her face. "And what would be so bad if I did? Marcy's a good person; I could do a whole lot worse." It gathered like an unstoppable force behind his lips; the coup-de-grace to their almost pointless argument. "Better her than a bitch like-"

Her gloved hands buried in his hair, tugging painfully, and he didn't gasp, because he was too busy backing her into the shelving, his mouth moving desperately over hers. The wooden shelves creaked in unhappiness, Max's teeth tugged harshly at his bottom lip, and he swung her around to shove her back against the bare concrete wall instead, hooking her leg around his waist, pressing himself intimately against her. She gasped against his mouth and they didn't even hear the guard's worried, "…everything okay in there?", as caught up as they were.

"Ah, Jesus," His fingers tightened on the underside of her thigh, his head arched away from her when she broke away and her warm lips moved down his throat. Christ, what were they doing? They were being held hostage in a damn supply closet that still smelled vaguely of pine-scented Lysol. But Max had reached the mark at the base of his neck, and she'd paused, shifting in want, her breath washing across the imprint of teeth and he couldn't think of anything else; he was almost sure he could feel the hot heat of her every breath coursing through his entire body. Her hand slid down the back of his head, through his hair, her fingers, encased in leather, coming to dig into the high neck of his sweater, yanking it down and away from the mark at the base of his throat. His own breathing had gotten labored; he could practically feel the need in her, the desire to run her teeth over the mark, and that need was echoed deep within his own body. His fingers twitched convulsively. Part of him wished she would, and all of him hoped that they wouldn't get interrupted if she did.

But it was with great strength that she moved past it, and nipped at the sensitive skin just _under_ the claim, instead. And then again, just skirting the edges of the mark, her tongue darting out just for a moment between nips to taste his skin. Alec's pupils expanded; his mind almost imploded as she tugged at the mark without actually touching it. Somehow, the near-but-not-quite actually made the reaction worse.

"_Fuck_," when she bit down, again, _harder_. He told himself he couldn't be held responsible for what would happen if she did that once more. His free hand slid down her side, he separated himself from her, just a little, and his hand slid between their bodies, grasping at the inside of the jean-clad thigh held up against him before they had a chance to find out. Everything in the world paused. Max released her hold on his neck to slowly look up at him, her breath held tightly in her lungs. He gazed solemnly back, his fingers sliding along the inside of her thigh, and he waited for her to say 'stop.' Her eyes widened, and she bit her lip, but she didn't say stop, not even when his fingers slid tentatively between her thighs. Not even when his eyes darkened, fixating on her mouth and the gasp that tumbled from it, and his hand slid roughly against her once more.

Alec lowered his head into the curve of her shoulder, his eyes squeezing shut as her hands tightened in his hair, his own hand moving hard, rhythmically, against her. She arched upwards, her breasts pressing against him, and she gasped harshly into his ear, sounding like she was grasping for air. The embarrassed voice from the other side of the door sounded as if it came from a million miles away, but they heard it just the same.

"…I can hear you, you know."

"Shit," Alec muttered.

"We should probably stop," Max agreed with a murmur. He glanced up at her, but her eyes were blown out, wide with desire, her full lips parted with need, and he had to bury his face into her shoulder once more. His own lips turned inwards; he couldn't help the open-mouthed kiss he pressed into her skin. Her head arched back into concrete, her body pressed itself into his hand.

This was rapidly becoming painful. "We can stop." He offered softly, his mouth against her flesh, the entirety of his body screaming in disagreement.

Her voice was needy, and breathy, "Please don't."

Which is how he found himself, against his better judgement, tugging the button of her jeans free, pulling down her zipper, and sliding his hand between satin and skin.

Max almost whimpered when long fingers slid across slick flesh. It hardly even registered that this was something that Jeri and Carter had hinted she wouldn't be able to resist; that she had told herself she absolutely could _not _do, that Peta had all but insisted she _should _do.

"Fuck," He grunted again, his head still resting against her shoulder, his eyes squeezed painfully shut once more.

"Alec," She whispered and he glanced up at her. His eyes darkened and with a firm yank she was pulled flush against his hard body. His hand, make that his _free_ hand, released her leg, and came up to slide gently across her jawline, turning her lips up towards his as his other hand-

He swallowed her cry with his mouth when his fingers slid inside.

God, this couldn't be happening. His tongue stroked hers and her arms tightened around his neck, grasping, gasping, her back arching, arching her body into his hand as his fingers began their maddening glide in and out of her wetness.

Oh god, what were they doing? They couldn't do this. She had to- She moaned, deep in the back of her throat, as his hand tightened on the back of her neck and he deepened the kiss. His fingers were becoming rougher, his hand demanding, as demanding as his kiss, and her pants, when he pulled away with shuddering breaths, were hot against his mouth.

But why was he pulling away? He'd released her mouth, released the back of her neck, and yes, he was drawing abruptly away from her. She wanted to protest, god, please, they couldn't stop again, _not again_, but he wasn't stopping, merely turning her around, pressing her into the wall, offering himself a better angle, his angled fingers sliding faster now, and harder. _Shit_. God-

"Alec!" Her body tightened and spasmed and _yes_, _right there_, as he grunted in her ear, and god! He jerked the shuddering tremors into a fervor and just when she thought the world would explode into fire-

"Hey! Keep it down in there!" The guard banged on the locked door, unable to contain his mortification for any longer. "Yer kidnapped for Chrissakes! Start actin' like it!"

There goes most of that buzz.

"Stop, stop, stopstopstopstop." Max's breath was still hitched, her hands were braced on the wall, and she felt her body twitching, rapidly readying for the release that'd been stolen from her only moments ago. Christ, they were in a moldy old closet, and Logan was waiting on them, and good lord, if heaven was a sensation, her eyes squeezed shut, it would totally be the flat of Alec's tongue moving up the side of her throat. Her hips jerked, uncontrolled, against his hand.

Stop? His brain couldn't wrap around it, the word might as well have been from an alien language. Her cry; now that was something he could grasp. Her arch and her wetness and her tightening body, that was a language he knew. Her arms coming back to wrap around his neck, that was a sign he could read. Her trembles, so close to orgasm-

"Fuckin' rabbits!" The guard sounded beyond embarrassed. "Don't make me come in there!"

It was sudden, but something changed within Max, he felt. A disturbance in the air. A sudden fluid calm. A resigned acceptance.

He didn't get a chance to decipher whatever that change was, because her hand dropped down to slide up his thigh, she squeezed his hardness through the rough material of his jeans, and he had to worry about the stability of his knees. His hand jerked roughly in response, tearing a cry from her lips. The sound crashing through the small space made his teeth clench.

"_Fuck_," Did he know no other words? His brain seemed disjointed, loose. Especially when she squeezed him again and he hissed. He pulled her off the wall, spinning them both so _he_ could lean there, to forestall the inevitablity of his knees giving out, and he briefly considered how difficult it'd be to depants them both right before-

"What did I tell you?!" A key turned in a lock and the door crashed open. "Knock it off!" The large man paused, magazine still held in one hand, his eyes widening as they followed Alec's arm across Max's front, down into her pants-

Alec's other arm came up and caught her under her knee as she surged upwards, swinging her other foot up, her boot catching the guard right in the torso. Alec grunted as her hand tightened around him, and the movement contracted her already tight body around his fingers. The guard flew out of the room and slammed into the wall, his head cracking painfully against it, and he slid down its bare concrete face, head lolling in unconsciousness. Alec blinked and his hand fell still as his usually quick mind struggled to keep up with what'd just happened.

Especially once she'd carefully disengaged, shuddering, and zipped up her pants, very carefully not looking at him.

Too far. They'd gone too far.

Alec blinked as comprehension took over. "You… you used me."

Her face was red. She couldn't look at him. "What are you talking about?"

"You wrangled noises out of me to lure the guard in here!" Was that awe in his voice, or annoyance?

"Don't be stupid!" She wished she'd planned it that way. No, that had been a rather epic case of 'winging it.' "Besides, I'm the one that should be angry! I was the one making all the noises!"

As embarassed as she was, nothing had yet returned to normal; everything still felt primed. Alec leaned back, smirking slowly, and Max's blush deepened as she pretended her body wasn't still throbbing, achingly on edge. She was sure that one more touch, his touch, and she would go crashing over it.

His voice was low, and he didn't move, just cocked his head to the side and watched her with dark eyes, willing her to come to him. "Want me to finish that for you?"

Her mouth was dry. All the gravity in the world couldn't keep her from taking a step towards him.

And then a familiar voice grated through her brain.

"Finish what?"

Max startled and whirled. Relaxing when she got a good look at the annoying, _annoying_ man waiting in the hallway.

But Mole was too busy wrinkling the scaly slits in his face that passed for a nose to notice their annoyance. He eyed them in suspicion. "Why does it smell like pine trees and sex in here?"

Max colored from the tips of her toes to the roots of her hair. Alec, in contrast, seemed almost angry. "What do you want, man?"

Mole blinked. Before his eyes narrowed. "I came here to get you, and found this place teeming with muscle-bound morons, you ungrateful bastard. I just frickin' rescued you." He glanced at the man in the hallway, crumpled in unconsciousness. "Well," he amended, "I helped."

"Came to get us?" Max asked in confusion, before Alec could throw something snarky back in response.

There was a long pause. "It's Peta." Mole turned, stomping out of the room into the hallway.

"What happened," Alec demanded, abruptly releasing the weirdness with Max to follow the man out of their 'holding cell' and focus on the more important issue. Even if his eyes did keep darting towards her red face, almost like he couldn't help it.

"Jay and Peta got into it," Mole scowled, already stalking off down the hallway.

Max and Alec shared a surprised look. Oh, Christ.

"Is Jay okay?" Max asked, as she and her Second fell in behind the transhuman. Her body was buzzing, her headache was coming back, but her brain was moving so fast, she hardly noticed.

"It's not Jay you should worry about," Mole's voice echoed down the long hallway.

Alec's fingers grasped the taller man's shoulder, and he stopped him abruptly. "What do you mean, 'it's not Jay?'" He demanded, dread coiling through his stomach.

Mole turned to stare at him with noticeably angry eyes. It was just like everyone had always known; the scaly, hard ass, lizard-man had more of a soft spot for the shark-blessed woman than he'd cared to admit. "I mean," he said angrily, "that somehow Clara got involved and it was enough of a distraction, to Peta anyway, that Jay used his ridiculous reflexes to break through one of her ribs and send it into her lung."

Max swallowed, Alec's vision hazed, just for a moment, as part of him wished he'd used the earlier opportunity to… but no, no one could know what would happen from one moment to the next and it was just as well that he hadn't seriously damaged the other man… Not to say that he wouldn't do it now if he saw Jay again. "Is she okay?" He asked, his mouth going dry.

"Jeri's working on her personally. Did you really think I hauled my mutant ass all the way out here to chat?" Mole demanded, before adding, "Now, is that it or can we finally go?" He glanced down at his large, shiny watch, a gift from a redhead he'd rather not think of, anxious to get moving once more.

"Lead the way," Alec gestured, his eyes still narrowed. Mole turned and started stomping down the hallway once more. There was silence, just for a moment, the only sound that of their quick, trotting steps. And then-

"By the way," Mole's voice echoed. "When I was busting my way in here, I got caught by a squirrely little guy near an office. He told me to give this to you." A CD went sailing over the transhuman's shoulder. Max caught it in surprise. "He gave me your cell phone, too." Mole directed at Alec. "Said he needed a new job."

Max shared a confused glance with Alec, before delegating it to the back of her mind; Peta, right now, was far more important.

Mole glanced at them over his shoulder. His watch read 12:01. His dry voice bounced off the walls.

"Happy Friday, lovebirds."


End file.
